


A New World.

by MuseMusing



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Beheading, Death, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Fear, Gore and Blood, Loneliness, M/M, Major Character(s), Occasional swear word, POV First Person, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:35:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseMusing/pseuds/MuseMusing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Kaneki's life took a turn for the worst, he wound up wounded after a date gone wrong. Then inevitably got thrown into the apocalypse, the zombie apocalypse. What will he do? Who will help him? Now what will happen?<br/>I sort of suck at giving summaries, my bad. <br/>And these characters are in no way mine; credit goes to the creator, Ishida Sui. The idea also goes out to (credited to) the male who gave me the okay to write this. (He actually wanted me to.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning.

  

 

Rize Kamishiro. Rize Kamishiro. Rize, Rize, Rize. That shy smile and those inviting purple irises. It was hard not to be drawn in by their sheer beauty. That was her plan all along, wasn’t it? To draw in some poor sap like me.  
It was a late night, the breeze blowing gently and sighing through rows and rows of dark houses. Everyone going to bed. No one aware of anything that could happen. That was going to happen. It felt like the wind was whispering to me on a breathy sigh, trying to tell me something. Trying to tell me the secrets it had gleaned from swirling around and around - circulating everyone and everything. She’d beckoned to me with her looks: the long purple hair that framed her delicate, shy features; purple irises that darted away from your face when she said something; the hourglass figure she kept pronounced with moderate ankle-length dresses; the soft feminine voice that urged you to listen and hang on to every consonant, syllable, pronunciation.  
     It was the third date by now and we had gone to a nice dinner, although Rize had hardly eaten anything, saying she’d had an ache in her stomach that didn’t want to disappear, but she’d insisted we go through with our plans. Which is why we were currently walking through rows of houses, heading to hers. She’d invited me. I’d agreed to go, thinking we’d go to mine, but she’d insisted on hers, too.  
We came to a house at the end of a long drive: a low log building, as if she enjoyed the wilderness surrounding her home; behind it was the surrounding forest. It was isolated from the rest of the houses, so it was more quiet in this area down a long driveway.. It gave you free reign to do as you pleased. She unlocked the door and we went inside; the furniture was simple, but rich in the colours. Reds. Purples. Pinks. All assorted in different places of her house to ensure it tied together perfectly.  
     My head swiveled around as I took it in. There were candles that kept it lit. The setting was romantic, but simplistic in nature, like it was made for this type of thing. I walked over to the couch, mostly wooden with plush cushions and I sank into it the moment I sat down. She’d beckoned me to sit with a delicate flourish of her hand. She stood by the side of the couch, hands clasped in front of her and her head bowed just subtly to look down at me.  
     “Can I get you anything? A glass of water, perhaps, Kaneki?”  
     “A glass of water would be perfect. Thank you, Rize.” I gave her a gentle and encouraging smile.  
She blushed subtly, fixing her half-shaped oval red rimmed glasses before she scurried off towards the kitchen to the back of where I sat.  
Coming in the door you had the living room, behind that the dining room, and then to the left the kitchen with a log wall separating it. There was a little hall just in front of the kitchen that I supposed led towards a back bedroom somewhere out of sight or something. I couldn’t see one from where I sat now, just the darkened hallway. A light turned on the kitchen and I could hear the scrape, an “ _erchhh_ ” and then _tink, tink_ of a glass being moved and picked up. A few seconds later I could hear the water being run. Then the _drip, drip, drip_ of the water as it was turned off. Somewhere in there as the water was being run, I could’ve sworn I heard a drawer being opened, but I figured it was my imagination and it was a trick of the mind.  
     I was anxiously drumming the fingers of my left hand against my thigh as I waited with patience as she did all of this.  
All of the sudden my head was yanked back by my hair and a brief whimper of surprise rose out of my throat; combined with the pain that blossomed at the center of the back of my skull. Eyes going up as I could see Rize looking down at me with a wicked, wide grin.  
I must have looked increasingly more bemused because her expression only got brighter, more sadistic. Her eyes had a maddened depth to them that was unfamiliar and had terror skittering and clawing its way down my spine.  
     “W-what’re you doing?” My voice came out shakier than I’d have liked.  
     “Kaaaaaneki,” She crooned to me soothingly, in a sing-song voice, her once delicate features twisted menacingly, “You’ve got something I’d like. Do you think I could have a taste?”  
     I swallowed audibly, mouth open, and that was before I saw a silver object in her hand. It took me a second to realize it must have been a scoop of some sort. It closely resembled an ice cream scoop, but it was much smaller and deeper..  
“W-wait, a taste? Of what? I-I don’t follow. And what’s that for?” I gave a weak gesture towards the weird scoop. I started to try to wiggle away, but the hand she had fisted in my hair was like iron and I was still much too surprised to do much at all, as pathetic as it might have been.  
     “A taste.. Of you.. Dear Kaneki, you look so deliciously delectable I can’t help myself but fantasize about it all. I’ve been watching you for quite some time and it didn’t take me long to set my sights on you at all. I decided that I had to have you before anyone else could. You’ve got just enough meat on your bones to be a nice satisfying meal. But those eyes of yours are truly mesmerising. They’ve got so much expression in them! So much fear and terror! You really don’t know what to do, do you, sweet Kaneki?”  
     About halfway through her explanation I figured I was in some deep shit and reached up to pry her fingers from my hair. Her maniacal grin grew wider to the point I figured her face might split in half.  
     “You really don’t want to do this, please! I’ll find a way to call the -” my words were cut off abruptly as she lifted her left hand with the scoop.  
     All I remember is that flash and then pain erupting in my right eye socket as I screamed in agony. She angled it so she could scoop out my eye and yanking back ferociously to ensure she got her prize. When she pulled back, my hands flew to my face as blood gushed between my fingers and a bit of gore. As futile as it was, I tried to stop the bleeding as I fell to my knees on the floor after sliding off of the couch.  
     I had no idea what Rize was doing, but I was in too much agony to pay much attention. She took my eye! Just like that, like it had been nothing! How many times had she done this to others? I desperately needed to get away from here, from her, before I ended up on a platter and served with a side of vegetables. Or did she want to eat me raw? One could only guess and I didn’t want to stick around to find out if I could avoid it.  
     I started to push myself to my feet, trying to ignore the throbbing in the side of my face now. It pulsated and caused a migraine, not to mention I could feel it as the blood poured from the wound she’d created with not one problem.  
     “Kaneki, where do you think you’re going to go? The fun’s just begun!” Rize giggled, feigning innocence and light-hearted conversation.  
     Nothing came in response on my end. Nothing could be mustered or conjured up. What do you even say to that? _Thank you for the offer, but I don’t want to be eaten?_ Or, even more ridiculous, _Sure, I think I’ll stay!_ Uhm, no, not likely. No one in their right mind would agree. Anyone would want to get away and as far as they could possibly imagine.  
    I stumbled away from the couch as she went to go grab my shirt, I felt the air shift behind me as I moved and knew it’d been narrowly avoided. Turning to face her, she was holding my eye between two fingers victoriously and grinning sadistically again. The expression, plain as day in that single eye, was terror and disbelief.  
     While I was in the middle of trying to think through the pain in my skull, Rize skipped around the couch and locked the front door. She still held my eye in hand before she stuffed into her mouth and bit down on it like it was her favourite delicacy - biting into it with almost tender care and a moan of delight. There was a squish from when she bit down into it, clear fluid flowing down her hand and mouth.. My stomach started to rebel, twisting and churning, and a burn as it slithered up my esophagus. Bending at the waist, I started to gag as she went back to chewing on my eye. Tears poured out of my good one.  
     “You taste so good, Kaneki,” she cackled madly now as she devoured what was left of it. It was then that I realized she was starting to come towards me again.  
     Without thinking about it, I bolted and ran towards the kitchen, the pain and repulsion temporarily forgotten in my panic and the need to survive. She was too busy skipping towards me at a leisurely pace to care too much, a euphoric expression on her face as if she knew her meal was going nowhere.  
     And what kind of house did not even have a back entrance? It was risky to go down the hall, in case it was a dead end. If there was even a bedroom back there. There could be, but there was also the possibility of nothing to be done to barricade her out of it to make a hasty retreat out the window, if there even was one.  
     I started ripping open cupboards and cabinet doors, anything to possibly slow her as Rize came over. That plan backfired when she darted around the wall to come around the other side, which would put her just behind me. I dove towards the floor at the same instant, scrambling around to try and grab hold of anything heavy enough. An unbidden whimper made its way out of my throat when I felt her behind me and she grabbed at me. She started to turn me to face her when I adjusted my grip on something I had gotten ahold of. As I was turned, I brought it up and I smacked her upside her head, causing her hair to shift and her to cry out in pain while grabbing her head. She staggered backwards, disoriented now and trying to make sense of her bearings again. I twisted and scrambled back up to my feet as fast as I could. Gripping the - I paused to look at whatever object I had retrieved and found out it was a frying pan - weapon as tightly as possible between two hands, mostly bloodied still now, my arms cocked back. Then I swung forward with all my might and brought it down on the side of her head again, like swinging at a baseball. I hit her again, and again still. Rize screeched with pain and she was now trying to get away from me.  
     Why did no one hear us? It hardly mattered anymore at this point, it seemed.  
     Rize fell to her knees as she pleaded, “Please, wait, Kaneki! We can figure something out can’t we?” That tone soft and sweet again.  
     No verbal answer would be good enough. Not anymore. There was no point. If I let up and she regained her bearings, she was surely going to finish me off slowly and painfully. I stood over her, arms high above my head with the frying pan in an iron grip. It felt like a lifeline as adrenaline coursed through my veins with no intent to stop.  
    _Kill her before she kills you_ , a voice whispered in my head.  
      _But it’s wrong, isn’t it?_ whispered another.  
      _She wants to eat you.. To swallow you whole. Don’t you see? You need to finish her off before you finishes you; she took your eye first after all_ , whispered something darker in the recesses of my mind.  
     That was it, that was when it broke inside. Combined with the fact that she started to reach for me, ignoring her blood matted hair.  
My arms swung down hard and when the frying pan connected with her skull, it reverberated up my arms and resonated deep within my bones. A sound that would never be forgotten once my hearing was a little more focused and not filled with what might have been rushing water through a tunnel. The frying pan was brought back up, blood spraying in an arch now, away from us. I kept swinging it back down, almost relishing now in the vibrations of it colliding with her head upon my doing. Each time the angle of my attacks were different. From the left. From the right. Straight up above her head. Again and again. Even after she stopped moving. After her chest no longer rose and fell anymore. Brain matter splattered on the ground, on me, on my weapon. Blood pooling around her head and covering the walls and the ceiling. Down her back and soaking her clothes. I was just as drenched in blood. My own. Rize’s.  
     The frying pan now rested lax in front of me, grip loose as it then fell to the ground with a clang! before it clattered and teetered around before resting flat. The whole ordeal should’ve taken no more than a few minutes or so, but it felt like it had lasted an eternity all the same. I started to numbly walk around, searching for a phone. Even my head felt a little numb even though it probably shouldn’t. There was no phone. Is that what she did, too? Maybe that’s why she didn’t seem in the least bit worried.  
     I started to walk, after unlocking the front door and I began my trek down the driveway, winding and curving as it lead back towards the other houses. It felt like I was walking on air. All floaty. Not really there, but not entirely gone, either. At least not yet.  
     Everything was quiet, but if it hadn’t been, I’d be positive that everything would be too loud. As dark as it was, everything seemed too bright. And it was like I was also wading through mud to get somewhere. It was more stumbling and swerving like a drunken man than an actual walk. The exertion. The throbbing pain that was there. But at the same time it wasn’t, either. A dream.  
     Time seemed to slow down, ticking away slower than before. It could have been minutes, or an hour, before I even came to a house.  
I pounded on the door, weakly, trying to rouse someone. Anyone. Anyone that would help me. My voice was hoarse and just as weak as I shouted, begging someone to help. I was leaning against a doorframe until I slowly began to slide down it. My eyelids began to shut slowly, despite the fact I was missing an eye, it was a habit to keep both open. I could feel a blackness creeping over me slowly. Steadily. It was not terrifying, though. It felt more welcoming than anything, honestly. As I leaned there, I let it take over my body. Even if I died, at least someone like Rize was gone from this world, right? I did some good, at least.  
     That was when my entire world went black, corrupted by the darkness that had threatened to overtake me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review and give feedback.


	2. Entering Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I deeply apologize for not having posted this sooner. The past couple weeks I have been fairly busy.

There was a darkness looming over me. Is that what this was? A hazy, buzzing feeling. It was hard to focus on anything, on anyone, if they were present. It was hard trying to climb my way to consciousness. Anything that entered my mind didn’t process like it should.

   “Will he recover just fine?” someone asked softly, but it sounded muddled, muffled, like they were being smothered. But that’s what my mind had made out to the best of its abilities.

    “Physically, yes. But mentally? He may not. He’s been through a horrific experience, it’s too soon to tell just yet,” came someone else’s response, a bit clearer this time.

    I struggled to the surface, like a drowning man in desperate need of air. But it didn’t do much good, because I stayed just under the surface. Consciousness was close, just out of reach. I must have been too exhausted to surface, or even remember what had happened or even start to piece together where I was, because then I was swallowed by the darkness once more.

  
  
  


**     **     **

  
  


A cold, foreboding feeling settled over my bones and that was first caused me to stir; my mind, at least, so I could begin to wake. It was a chill that settled into my bones; not one that made me cold and shivering, but one that made me numb. This time around it was easy enough to use my other senses to get a feel of the place I was in. Smell. What did I smell? There was a strong, crisp smell; lemon and disinfectant. What did I hear? Beeping. Footsteps. Talking, even though it was muted, like it was behind a closed door. What could I feel? An irritating rub on my skin, like scratchy blankets. A light air around me, nothing bad. My eyes were closed, so nothing could be - wait a second. That numb feeling, most of it was coming from my right eye.

    It was then that everything came crashing down on me. Because it was in that instance that _I_ _remembered everything_. Rize ripped out my fucking _eye_ and then _ate_ it. The crazy bitch had then tried to catch me to eat me.

    My eyelids flew open. My eye! My hand had moved, sluggishly, towards my right eye, where it was still pitch black. Nothing. At all. Fingertips moved, grazing and dancing along heavy gauze wrapped around my head diagonally. It was thick, padded, and just as scratchy as the blankets I was sheltered beneath.

    I’d stumbled down the driveway, to the nearest houses, seeking help. I’d passed out in front of a house on a doorstep. I remembered now. Someone had obviously woken, and driven me to the nearest hospital.

    I was still missing an entire portion of my sight. There was nothing to the right, most of the rest of the room I was in was absent, unable to be seen. The walls were white, a curtain drawn around the bed I was currently in. The hospital room was nearly entirely white, aside from a board on the opposite wall with black writing, depicting the names of my doctor and nurse, presumably. And then of course minus the little odds and ends things, like metal rungs, or chair legs (obviously being the things not white).

    It was when I was looking at a spot of blood on my hand, a cut on the back it appeared to be, that I also remembered I had murdered someone in cold blood. _I murdered someone_. My hand froze on the gauze around my head, having still been moving around in a lazy, sluggish manner. I felt remorse settle deep within my bones, right alongside that cold, foreboding sensation that seemed to have taken permanent residence right where it was.

     _Why feel remorse? She did try to eat you. She was going to kill you_ , that voice whispered in the back of my mind.

     _But it’s still wrong to have murdered someone else in cold blood, isn’t it?_ whispered some other part of me.

     _Who cares? She was crazy and the world is better off without her_ , the first voice spoke again, more insistent this time.

     _The world’s never better off without someone else in it!_ argued the second voice.

 _That isn’t what you thought when you collapsed onto someone else’s porch, yelling for help, is it? You’re glad she’s dead. You’re happy you escaped and still living. Missing an eye is a small price to pay for what could have came,_ the first voice again, louder this time and angrier, as if astounded by the mere topic in which they were arguing.

    The second voice didn’t quip up again after that, an eery silence in the back on my mind.

    A door opened, assuming it was my own door, I turned my head to look. Pain shot through my skull, spiking momentarily before it began to settle again from such a swift, unexpected action. I allowed my right hand to fall back down to my side.

    The doctor came in with a soft, sympathetic smile on his face as he approached, clipboard in his left hand. There was a tag on his jacket pocket, but I didn’t care to read it, or even try; I only knew it was there because of the flash of silver as it caught one of the lights in my room.

    “You’re finally awake, Kaneki. We’ve been waiting for you to wake up. The police are here and they’ve been waiting to speak with you. I’m Doctor Kanou and I’ve been looking over you as you’ve been recovering,” Doctor Kanou said to me kindly.

    He was an elderly man somewhere in his fifties, I'd guess. His white hair was slicked back except for three pieces, two on his left  (my right) and one on his right (my left) and each one was curled inward and they kind of resembled horns. Maybe they didn’t want to be tamed or he did it purposefully. All I knew was that I didn’t particularly care, save for the fact this man had apparently saved my life. His brown eyes were framed by slight lines beneath them, due to his age, and at the outer corners, which was a good indication he smiled a lot. While wearing your classic hospital attire of a white overcoat. Beneath that he wore a pastel green shirt and a rather ugly tie that was purple with green stripes and khaki looking pants. Tied together with white sneakers fit for a hospital.

    Behind him were two police officers, one male and one female. Both having introduced themselves after the good doctor, but I’d zoned out during most of Kanou’s introduction. I was too busy wondering if I’d be sent to jail for murdering someone, even though she’d tried to eat me first. Those two thoughts were still warring within my head; one making me want to puke and the other terrifying me, respectively in that order.

    Doctor Kanou paused to watch me and the sympathetic smile he was giving me caused goosebumps to raise on my arms. I didn’t know why, but there was something not entirely right with this doctor.

    “Kaneki, if it’s all right with you, these kind officers would like to have a few words with you. To take your statement,” Doctor Kanou said, kindly, as if to give me hope that I was able to decline since I was up and mostly here.

    I merely gave a short nod, deciding it was best to just get this over with. If I was lucky, I’d be allowed to heal before they carted me off to wherever they wanted to.

    Both police officers moved over to me, the man making himself nice and comfortable in the chair at my bedside while the woman stood there, notepad in hand and pen in the other, clearly ready to jot down notes.

    “Mr. Kaneki, we’d like you to tell us all you can remember about Ms. Kamishiro if you feel up to it,” the man spoke, his voice contrasting with his lanky appearance.

    I’d had to snap out of my daze in order to pay attention and really focus for a good while since I wouldn’t be alone for the next half hour to an hour. Either that or whenever they deemed fit to leave.

    “Rize and I, I’d met her in a coffee shop. We liked the same author. She was so kind and wonderful, or so I had thought. I asked her out to have coffee together one morning or something and she agreed. It lead up to two more dates after that, one was a lunch date and the other was a dinner date and it was in the span of the previous - Wait, what day is it?” I’d stopped to ask, because I had no idea how long I’d been out for.

    “It’s Tuesday, young man. Please continue.” The woman said curtly, her lip curled in a sneer.

    I’d been out for two days, at least. Two and a half at the most. I had sat up when the police had come over, mouth now hanging open subtly in a perfect ‘O’ shape in bemusement.

    The male officer started calling my name repeatedly and even leaned over to place a comforting hand on my shoulder, causing me to shy away from the contact. “Kaneki, if you can’t do this, we’ll come back tomorrow.” Mistaking my shock for the days passed for the entire recollection of the incident. The female officer sent a glare to the back of her partner’s head, like she had better things to do.

    I gave a slight shake of my head, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. My voice shakier than before now, “No, I can do this. Anyway, it was in the span of the previous week. She offered to take me to her home, since it was closer than mine and it was already dark out and getting even darker by the moment. When we got there, I sat on the couch, and she went to get me a glass of water. When she came back, she gripped my hair and yanked back. She-she didn’t have water, even though I’d heard her in the kitchen,” I’d paused here, remembering the drawer I’d thought I’d imagined being opened, “I heard a drawer open, but I thought it was my imagination. I guess not.

    “She was holding some sort of scoop. Then she plunged it into my eye and ripped it out. She-she ate it, slowly, and started laughing. I ran to the kitchen, to look for anything. I didn’t even check the drawers for a knife, but I should’ve. It was too late, because she was on me then, so I started throwing open cabinets. I fell to the ground and then I grabbed the nearest thing: a frying pan. I swung and hit her in the head. I got up, and I hit her a few more times.

    “I stopped after that, but she came at me again. So I hit her again, and again, and again. I killed her,” by this time, tears were streaking down my face from my left eye. Meanwhile the standing officer was scribbling as fast as she could. Halfway through my explanation I’d started speaking quicker, just wanting to get it out there.

    I waited for the worst, to be shipped off right then and now, hands trembling with the memory and the possibility of what to happen next.

    The male officer nodded, stood up, and gave my bed a brief pat. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Kaneki. We’ll be in touch.” He gave me a genuinely kind smile before he started to walk to the door, partner following him. It’d taken shorter than I’d originally thought; only being about twenty minutes that they even stayed.

    “Y-you aren’t going to arrest me?”I blurted, slapping a hand over my mouth over my idiocy.

    He paused by the door, hand on the handle, before looking back to me. An amused expression on his face. “No, young man. You were brave in what you did. We’ve been looking for the cause of the people vanishing and bits and pieces of them turning up alone. Now we figure you’ve stopped the person behind it because like clockwork, you showed up. We get someone new every week. Don’t you watch the news?”

    I sheepishly shook my head; I tended not to because most things were rubbish or bullshit. Spewing things no one really cared for. Then again, it probably would’ve helped me if I had turned on the television once or twice a week, huh? It could’ve saved me a bit of trouble, or at least had me going out in a more armed fashion.

    “We’ll be seeing you again.” The woman addressed me curtly again before shoving her exasperated partner out to the door. Exasperated at her, since the look he had only appeared when she spoke. Maybe they weren’t compatible or something as a team.

    Once again I was left alone, to my thoughts, as I wiggled my way back down and pulling the blankets up over me to rest just beneath my chin. I didn’t want to be alone. Not entirely, at least. With someone else, I could keep myself busy and not have these thoughts swirl around and around inside my head. The sickening feeling in my stomach from my murderous actions began to settle, since I was pushing it to the back of my mind to be left there.

    I hadn’t realized it, but I was still utterly exhausted. Emotionally and somewhat physically. The whole ordeal had been mostly taxing on my emotional state as it was, and mostly physical because my body’d been resting for the past couple days.

    I shut my eyes and allowed myself to fall asleep once more for that day. Considering if it’d even been the same day I had been awake earlier. Not that it mattered much to me at that point.

    There was no dreaming that afternoon that tried to invade. No nightmares to bring those memories back. Not yet.

   I woke to the sight of flowers at the side of my bed to the left. I didn’t know what they were, but it was an entire splash of colour, ranging from yellow to red. There was a card on it, too hard to see even from a short distance. Reaching out to take the card then pulling it close to read it.

    “I stopped by earlier, but you were passed out and understandably so. I’ll drop by again later!” It was Hide’s writing. The flowers were unexpected. Even a stuffed animal or another get-well card wouldn’t have been expected.

     _Knock-knock. Knock-knock._

    “Come in!” I called out, voice just as raspy as before. I desperately hoped it’d be Hide again, but judging by the flash of blonde I saw as I turned to look, I was let down.

    It was a nurse, come to bring food now that I was awake and more alert. She set a tray down in front of me, atop a little ledge so often next to hospital beds for whatever you needed it for. Just as quickly as she’d entered, she left. Without a word. Without a smile. Without another acknowledgement.

    Squinting at my plate, it looked something like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans, jello, and what I was hoping was water. As unappealing as the food appeared, the meatloaf a mushy mess of brown, I dug in because the rumbling of my stomach overruled my initial disgust at the quality.

    Sometime after that, Doctor Kanou came in after knocking and not waiting for permission. He came over to stand at the side of the bed, making me uneasy because it was the side I couldn’t see out of unless my head was turned, so I turned to look.

    “You’re up again, Kaneki, and I see you’ve eaten. Very good indeed,” he grinned at me and it was unsettling.

    There was a commotion outside my room, and for the life of me I couldn’t imagine what was happening. I mean, after all, this was a hospital. Not many bad things happened here aside from the death of loved ones, right?

     _Wrong_. I couldn’t have been more wrong at that moment, as I’d soon find out.

    I struggled to sit up, only to discover my movements were a bit lethargic, to my horror. Doctor Kanou pulled out a syringe from his pocket, full of an unhealthy, dull blue fluid. It looked like acid, with an unearthly dim glow about it. He lightly pushed on the end, a small stream jetting out and splashing to the floor and now this doctor had that same maniacal grin settling on his face that sent me a flashback of Rize’s face, which was strange because I was seeing her face on his body.

    “You see, you’ve got enough damage that I can test this serum on. Something I’ve been working on to help regrow lost limbs or even cure deadly diseases. I’ve tried it on others, but to no avail. You’re my hundredth test subject, congratulations. I just needed you to be conscious for this so I could monitor your reaction to it. Hold still, this won’t take long.”

   Just like that, he injected it into my IV line and with horror I watched as the poisonous fluid moved through the line before being forced into my system. It felt like ice that went into my system, freezing your veins, like having water being pushed into your vein before ejecting a line. Except that didn’t last as long as this did as it spread. I curled into the fetal position on my side with a pained cry.

    My stomach was clenching painfully and I was getting random searing pains in different locations: my ribs; lungs; head; calves; knees, and arms to name some. But they didn’t stop, they didn’t ebb. They got stronger and stronger until I was left in tears again. It felt like my joints were grinding together, cells fighting against one another in my body for dominance, to figure out what would happen in the end. The blue veins in my arms got even bluer, more vibrant. My skin turned ashen, flickering from ashen back to the pale complexion I was accustomed to.

    For a second, it looked like my fingernails had started to decay in some areas. Around the cuticle, they turned dark and grey, lengthening a smidgen and cracking and splitting at the tips before smoothing out and shortening once more to their stubby length. The worst possible pain was the one in my eyes. My right one was throbbing and it felt like something was shifting and wriggling within its socket, where the gauze kept everything from being seen. The cuts on my arms and hands had begun to bleed, but it was blue and red. I wasn’t sure how the cuts had gotten there, or where they even came from. Perhaps glass shattering in my haste a couple nights ago when I was randomly pulling at things. Right then, it didn’t exactly matter. All that mattered was that it hurt and I wanted it to end. Even if I needed to die for it to end.

    On some level it saddened me. I didn’t want to leave Hide behind. He was the closest thing I had to family. The only person in my life who cared enough to even visit the hospital.

   “Excellent! Kaneki, can you tell me what you feel? Where does it hurt? Does it tingle?” Doctor Psycho asked excitedly, hands clasped and eyes glimmering.

    I wanted to tell him to go screw himself, but one, I was in too much pain. Two, I feared if I tried to talk I might bite off a piece my own tongue judging by how clenched my jaws currently were.

    It must have only been ten or twenty minutes that this lasted. I was left laying there, panting, shivering, and sweating profusely. A few whimpers went by unnoticed on my end, but perhaps the “good doctor” noticed his patient was in pain and he probably shouldn’t have done that.

    It was also then that my stomach decided then was a good time to empty itself because I leaned forward, mouth getting more full with saliva to prepare and protect itself from acid, as my sides heaved and stomach churned. In an instant, I’d expelled everything that had been consumed, and later, a few strings of bile. It hadn’t been that good anyway, the food, that is, but that didn’t mean that I had wanted it all to come back up. I wiped my mouth against the edge of the sheet on the bed.

    I looked up blearily. There was a fierce pang of what might have been satisfaction, since the Doctor was covered in vomit around his abdomen. It was gross, being brown, green, and orange (from the jello I’d been given). Not to mention chunky and also kind of liquidy.

    Doctor Psycho just looked mildly unimpressed. He started to shake the vomit off of his coat, but it wasn’t as easy to get rid of it off of his under shirt. After that it didn’t quite seem to faze him very much. It was also fairly foul smelling, but I don’t think that bothered him either. Meanwhile, I’m just curled up here in the fetal position wondering what the hell had just transpired.

    Slowly, I began to push myself up into a sitting position. “It appears nothing has really happened. I thought for a second that perhaps you were undergoing the same transformation as the others. Then I thought perhaps your eye would grow back judging by the oozing blood that is coating your gauze,” Psycho stated with a disappointed look.

    I wanted to ask what he’d given me, but it was also fairly obvious. Ranging from disease to certain death in a small container. But considering I wasn’t dead, yet, I was going with disease.

    “Then again, you aren’t showing the same symptoms as the other studies. I wonder..” he paused in his musings before starting again, “I’ll need to take some blood from you so I can be certain, but - ”

    The door burst open, and the blonde nurse from before stumbled in. “Doctor! Your patients got loose from the basement and they’re destroying everything! One of them bit me!” She sobbed hysterically, an awfully high pitched wailing tearing through her throat. She dropped to the ground and I could see some of the changes going on in her body that I could see on myself before. Her veins became more prominent when they shouldn’t have been too visible, the veins bluer and brighter in tone. Her complexion turned ashen and her hair had even started to look like it was decaying, turning dingier and less vibrant. Her manicured nails split and cracked at the ends, and her tongue, which was still visible from her screaming had engorged for some reason and became a bluish purple.

    It was after that that she gave a chattering noise, before giving a hissing growl and she went after the doctor, who moved around her with ease, clearly having had the experience. It was also then that I leapt from the bed after yanking out the IV in the process of doing so. I was in a robe that had my ass hanging out in the back and some other unmentionables that may or may not have been swaying in the wind as I ran, albeit a bit sluggishly, towards the door. I wanted out and that was what drove me.

    That was when I entered true hell at this point. There were dozens of people running through the halls of the hospital and now the screams were piercing. People who seemed more like the nurse were becoming more in numbers. They were a little fast, but easy to evade if you moved at the right moment. There were patients, nurses, doctors, relatives, and friends as they ran around in a panic; towards the staircase, towards the elevators.

    I didn’t know where I was going and it didn’t matter as long as I got out. I took multiple turns, going down a few flights via stairs and I had to dodge the monsters on my way down and through halls. I passed by a few rooms where they were munching on patients in bed whom were too weak to move and had no help by this point because everyone was running for their lives. Eventually I came to a stop at ground level in the hospital kitchen. There wasn’t as many people, just a few cooks who were packing up and leaving, having heard the commotion from upstairs and having seen a few people go by.

    “What’s going on?!” One of the guys shouted at me, as fazed as I was about my current state of undress.

    It took me a moment to answer, but my voice was surprisingly calmer than I thought it’d be, “Welcome to the zombie apocalypse. It’s just started.”

    They stared at me, astounded and bemused, but it didn’t stay that way for long because one of the zombies zoomed into the kitchen and ran towards one of the staff, who promptly yelped and ran off. Me? I ran for the cabinets. Something touched me on my shoulder before a sharp pain stung into my shoulder. I shrieked, a rather feminine shriek, before whirling around and bringing up my weapon of choice: another frying pan.

    I found it ironic that I’d gotten ahold of yet another frying pan. By that time, I didn’t stay still because I started whaling on the male zombie and, much like Rize, he dropped dead. Or twice dead now?

    After a few moments, though, I began to feel that same pain as earlier. It wasn’t as bad, but still terrible enough to drop me to one knee. It lasted a shorter span of time, being as direct as the first dose. That was when realized that what I’d been given was something that started the zombie apocalypse. Not to mention that when the nurse spoke, apparently all of his patients were in the basement and had escaped somehow.

    Once stable enough to get up, shoulder all bloody, I took the staff’s example and ran from the kitchen. It seems that Psycho took my example and ran down to the first floor.

    He was being followed by a hoard of a dozen zombies. He looked positively frantic by the whole ordeal and that he couldn’t get away at all. I stood there, in the doorway to a swinging door to the kitchen while I watched, unable to tear my gaze from the scene unfolding in front of me. A zombie had lunged forward, wrapping her arms around his waist and dragging him down. Another zombie behind him grabbed him and promptly tossed him into the nearest wall as hard as said zombie could before Psycho fell to the ground. It was clear to me that it was quite possible that these undead husks of people remembered who this man was and what he’d done. The majority of the zombies lunged and lurched forward and atop the man that had caused them to become what they were.

    I noticed that some were darker in ashen complexions and others had duller veins, or were lacking a bulbous, nasty tongue (as in it was as normal as mine). I watched with sick fascination as they began to tear into him, using their sharpened, cracked fingernails to tear at flesh and using their teeth when they had room to lower themselves and grab a hunk of flesh. It was frightening how easy it seemed to be for them. Arms were being shredded, hair pulled out, legs split wide down their meaty centers as zombies devoured meat; muscle and gore alike and even bits of bone if it couldn’t be helped. His face was split open as two zombies bent over him and started to eat it, one taking most of his nose in a couple goes in earnest.

    Another zombie came from the nearest room, dove towards the ground and began to munch on his leg, joining another zombie. There was a sickening crunch as one zombie snapped his rib, having torn open the Doctor’s chest. His screams faded out until they stopped completely. I didn’t stay to see him become an entire zombie buffet, because it was enough to satisfy the wish to kill him to injecting me with a dangerous virus and then starting the zombie apocalypse.

    I ran again, snagging a pair of shoes off a dead person after quickly checking their size, deciding to put them on later, having them tucked under my arm. Running out of the hospital, I could see more and more zombies and more floods of screaming and panicking people who were trying to find cover and avoid the plague that was slowly, gradually going to be sweeping across the city. Many already had shredded clothes and fresh wounds and disheveled hair.

    I’d been introduced to the zombie apocalypse and then walked into the midst of it out in the open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Give feedback if you would like. I hope you enjoy. All mistakes are mine, so I take full responsibility.


	3. Home.

* * *

Running down the street was easy. Sort of. Dodging and swerving to avoid zombies and other people alike made it slightly more difficult. Not one person cared that I was mostly naked, wielding a frying pan, and shoes tucked under one arm. Then again, when you're trying to escape from a bunch of undead cannibals, a nearly nude male isn't going to be on the top of anyone’s priority list.

    It was a bit fun, I admit, to just whale on a couple of zombies here and there. It was like letting off some pent-up steam. Even some I didn't know I had.

    After running down the street for what felt like a couple hours, I decided to duck into a clothing store. It looked like one. It even smelled like one. 

    There were rows and rows of clothing and after a few minutes I was pretty sure it was something like a Goodwill. I didn't see anyone, not at first glance, so I took that to mean I was fine to go ahead. 

    Walking towards the back of the store to find a backpack or something to stash a few things in, I managed to find something close to a satchel. Navigating around the store was easy from the different signs in front of each row and at one point, I'd needed to go more towards the back of the store for underwear. 

    Within twenty minutes I'd had six pairs of jeans, t-shirts, socks, and underwear. I didn’t see much of a reason to go for the pajamas, so I left those alone. I wound up folding clothes time and time again just to fit everything before I gave up and went to find something bigger to stash everything inside. 

    Well, technically I wound up with seven pairs of everything, but the last pair I set aside and stripped out of the hospital attire. I pulled on a light grey t-shirt, blue jeans, black socks, and then the sneakers. It was all nice fitting. I’d had a hard time convincing myself to set down the frying pan. Knowing I was immune didn’t mean that I wanted to get bit by another zombie. That pain was bad enough and I’d rather avoid it at all costs if I could manage it.

    Zipping up the backpack I’d manage to find, I started to walk towards the front door to go out. It was hard to tell whether things had settled down, even a little, but I knew that wasn’t something that would happen. 

    I heard the whisper of fabric before a soft  _ clang!  _ off to my left and I whirled around, trying to spot what had caused it. Frying pan raised in defense and legs spread about a hips’ width apart, either to get ready to run or ready to swing, whichever might be more effective. 

    A woman came out from behind a few racks and for a few seconds I wondered just how long she’d been there. She wasn’t ashen, covered in blood, groaning and snarling, so I figured it was a safe bet to assume she was human. 

    Pointing a finger at my clothes and the backpack and said, “That’s stealing, young man.” 

    I gave her a dumbfounded look for the next minute or two. “We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and you’re worried about someone  _ stealing? _ News flash here, but I think there’s something a bit more important to worry of . . . Like survival!”

    “Stealing is still something you shouldn’t be doing!” the woman hissed at me. 

    Giving her a look that said I thought she was nuts I replied with, “You . . . have a nice day, now.” I gave her a curt nod and then rushed out before she could try to take anything from me. 

    Now that I had some clothes, I figured it’d be a good time to either a) find a place to sleep, or b) go to another store and scope out some things so I could eat, yet I did neither. 

    I thought about Hide and the flowers he’d left with the note. So I headed in my original direction, to my right, and started on the course for Hide’s house. I took a bunch of twists and turns, mainly down side and back roads. The closer I got out of town, the less traffic I ran into. The spreading of the virus was probably making its sweet way down; then again, I could just be avoiding the biggest parts of it in waves. 

    Absently, I wondered if I could find a house to use as my shelter instead of an alley or some potentially dangerous warehouse. It would be easier in a house and less exits and entrances to cover and block. But in a warehouse, I would have more options to run away if the waves became too intense to handle and my wielding a frying pan wasn’t enough. 

    I’d never shot a gun, so I didn’t want to accidentally shoot a companion should I encounter them. I definitely didn’t want to shoot myself, either. 

    It was a little strange to know I didn’t need to use my frying pan again just yet, but I kept it slightly raised as I alternated between jogging and walking. Most of the houses I started to pass had chipped painting, missing windows, and one even had half of a garage missing. 

    Turning down a dirt road, I crept down the left side of the street until I came to the eighth one at the end of the road (bit of an unnecessary long road). The house was a really ugly shade of orange-pink and the door was purple; outline and all. Most of the trim was purple. I would’ve painted over this house awhile ago. Why would you keep this colour? One of the windows in the front had a bag taped into place from when I’d accidentally thrown a ball into the house. No one got around to fixing it. Or they didn’t care. It was one of the two. 

    Aside from the broken window, there didn’t seem to be anything else out of place, so I went up the driveway and then to the front door. Peering in through the windows here, I didn’t see anything. Not a person’s shadow, no movements, nothing. 

    I didn’t want to knock, so I reached up and turned the knob to the front door. It wasn’t a surprise it was unlocked, as it usually was. Hide’s parents didn’t really care for locking the door unless it was night out. Opening the door and pushing it inwards was easy since, obviously it was unlocked, and it was a bonus that the door didn’t squeak and squeal.

    The house immediately opened up into the living room off to the right, a bedroom on the right side, close-ish to the living room. It was more like just outside of the circumference of the living room. To the left was a hallway where two more bedrooms and a bathroom would be. In front of me to the left slightly, on the outside of the separating wall, was the kitchen. 

    I paused just inside the doorway after shutting the front door. I shut my eyelids, squeezing them, because I was getting flashbacks from Rize’s house, but even more than that, this house looked kind of similar to hers. I could almost envision her coming after me to try and take my left eye. 

    A whimper, unbidden, rose from my throat and the images that kept playing behind my eyelids. She got closer . . . and closer . . . and closer. Instinctively, I swung the frying pan. 

    That was what broke me out of the entrapment of my own mind because the frying pan hit the wall hard and the force of it reverberated up my arms. Shakily exhaling, I began to scope out the house, heading towards the bedroom to the right. If there was something, anyone, here then they certainly knew they weren’t alone now. 

    Gathering my bearings again and calming myself just in case I needed to really swing at something, I kept advancing. Eyes darting around the area of the master bedroom and ears straining to hear everything; to catch whatever might be out of place as my eyes were forward. Going further into the bedroom and checking the closets, under the bed, and the bathroom, I didn’t see a shred of evidence that anyone had been here since earlier. The toothbrushes I found in the bathroom weren’t wet, but a towel was still slightly damp, I discovered, once I felt it. Even the bed was made. I never made mine because it always wound up crooked. 

    Exiting this room, I went across the house towards the hall. My mind was so focused on the present it, thankfully, kept me away from the past and allowed me to keep a clear head. 

    Doing the same thing to the first bedroom I came to, there was no signs of anyone having been there. The bathroom in the middle of the two bedrooms was the same as the master bath. Coming to the last door on the left side of the hallway, I pushed open the bedroom door. 

    What I saw chilled my blood to the core. Because, speaking of blood, this bedroom was covered in splatters and puddles of it. There was a particularly large puddle on the floor with streaks heading towards the window; up the wall, and over the windowsill. This was Hide’s room. Had I made a mistake in thinking that the virus hadn’t made it this far? 

    Without thinking or even checking the rest of the bedroom, I ran to the window in a panic. He couldn’t be dead, could he? Rather, undead. I would’ve rathered he be alive and well. 

    Trailing from outside the window, the blood streaks continued off towards the backyard. After that, I couldn’t see where they lead to or if they even stopped somewhere. 

_ Hisssss!  _

    How did something come in? I’d checked the whole -  _ You fucking forgot to check this room, you twit! _ hissed a voice in the back of my head as it scolded me. 

    I didn’t even whirl around to check. Didn’t freeze up. Didn’t scream in shock. Lunged out the window instead and crashed to the ground in a heap. Scrambling up to all fours, I started off before hauling myself up and onto two legs to get going. If Hide was a zombie at this time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see. It wasn’t the last image of him like that that I wanted to have in my head. I couldn’t stick with it and I already had a few other things that would haunt my dreams when I could sleep. 

    A zombified Hide wasn’t something I wanted in those dreams. I wanted to remember Hide the way the last time I’d seen him, just before the final date with Rize. It was easy to not forget him and hopefully, over time, I’d still be able to picture him in my mind as clear as day. 

    I ran back the way I’d come and down into the most deserted part of town. Maybe a small warehouse wouldn’t be so bad right now. A little bit of space might actually do me some good for once.

_ What if Hide really is dead? I’m never going to see him again, _ these thoughts kept circling around and around in my head. 

_ Idiot! You should have looked to see who it was, so you had clarification, so you didn’t need to guess and constantly worry, _ the voices from earlier were back. 

_ So what if it was Hide? I didn’t want my last look at him to be as some monster! _ this voice, the last one, wailed the loudest. The most incessant voice. 

    Running back into town, lost in my own thoughts, it took a shorter time since I ran the entire way back. By the time I’d made it to an alley and my limbs decided for a break, I collapsed to the ground, shivering and quaking. 

    Who did I have now? My parents were dead. Hide was the one person who my life had revolved around. He was the one who seemed to keep me afloat. Kept me going. He wanted me around and he made sure I knew it. All those times he’d been observing how much food I ate, how much to drink I got, and how much rest I’d be getting. He made sure I was well taken care of. 

    At least before the world had started to turn into a zombie nest there was always someone to see. Someone to wave to. To smile at. To make small talk with. So far, there was no one around. Not anymore. This far to the end of town, in a more abandoned section, there wasn’t another soul for miles. Anyone who still seemed to have a soul at this point. 

    In all my life, I’d never felt so alone than I did right now. The wind blew around me on a soft, despaired sigh. Was nature itself feeling horrible? 

    Why did this have to happen? Absently, I started to wonder what made the Doctor decide to try his experiments on his patients. His earlier tries . . . those people had certainly remembered him. 

    But how was I immune? What made someone immune to this? What made you targeted for the virus?

    There had to be others who were like me, right? Somewhere out there. Maybe if I found them, maybe if I got along with them . . . I would be able to find something of a home again. Something close to a family, if it came down to that. 

    A new resolve put into place, I dragged myself up to my feet. It was a bit unsteady for a few moments, body sagging with exhaustion. This wasn’t the end. Not yet, anyway. We could still keep going. I could. To find someone else who was like me. 

   Even if they weren’t, I wasn’t going to let them die on my watch. It was already time to push back. To try and get this under control before it was too hard to manage and the world was entirely lost. It was time to contain it here, in this city, if possible. It might not be, but maybe there was someone else out there who would have a similar thought process. 

    Shouldering my backpack, fixing it, I started off further into town. There was still a few more hours before the sun would start to set, and until then, I had a bit of work to do before it was possible to rest. I would use the light when it surfaced; nothing superficial to avoid drawing attention to myself. 

    I didn’t know what it was that made these zombies move, so maybe it was time to figure it out to know for sure; in order to keep certain things in check.

    Was it noise? Was it smell? Was it sight? Did they go for anyone? I thought so; that they went for anyone. 

    As I walked further into town, I picked up a rock from the corner of a store, palming it. I waited until I was a good distance from the more abandoned portion, thinking I would set up a home somewhere down there once I finished. 

    I came to an empty store, one that looked like a hardware store or something. I threw the rock into the air a few times, testing its weight. It was a big rock and had a good amount of weight. So with enough force, it might be able to do some damage. 

    But before I threw the rock, maybe I should check around the store to see if I could find anything that I would be able to use more. A frying pan, as well as it worked, wouldn’t be good to use as my only weapon. It would be a good idea to stock up on a few things and it was better to look without a horde of the undead shuffling after me like their joints had aged decades. 

    Walking into the store, I followed all the signs that directed me to the tools section. It might come in handy. As I walked, I tried to be as quiet as I could possibly manage and I was hoping that whatever I took would fit in the backpack I currently had. Then again, it was a pretty big one, and I’d packed all the clothes inside just in case I needed to carry everything. 

    Scanning the tools section once I found it to the left side of the store, I found a nice screwdriver set. If one snuck up on me, a little one would be easy to conceal and easy to get to if my arms were free. I picked up a Dewalt screwdriver set. It was easy to get the container open and begin stuffing the bigger ones into the backpack I had. I set the smaller ones into either of my front pockets for easier access. The shirt I wore would hide the bulge that they created since it was baggy enough. 

    Looking around a bit more, I found some blades on the ground, like someone had had the same idea but left in a hurry. The sides of the blades were etched with Milwaukee with a lightning bolt shape beneath in. The word Sawzall was beneath that one. Then off to the left the words THE AX in bold black lettering, as the other two were in red. The blades were about nine inches long, about five tiny teeth per inch, and a flat, smooth backing so it was easy to hold and I wouldn’t slice open a palm. Gathering all five, I set them in the front part of the backpack, intending to find something to wrap them in later. 

    I also couldn’t pass up a Milwaukee grout rake. This one also had a handle for me to grab and the bottom of it was curved with a coarse carbide grit (that’s what the packaging said). It was easy to open with one of the blades in hand and after almost taking off two fingers the package was open. Setting all seven weapons into the backpack, I zipped it up as quietly as I could manage. I didn’t know if there’d been more blades in the previous packaging, but six was a good amount to carry around for right now. 

   I’d set down the frying pan, but I’d keep my eyes and ears out to listen for any signs of zombies. With everything combined, that gave me a total of eighteen weapons (yes, including the frying pan). 

    Frying pan and rock in right and left hand, respectively, I began to walk around again. I paused, before running down the aisle and knocking around a variety of things to make huge clutters, clattering, and pings. All in rapid succession. 

    I waited at the end of the aisle. And waited. And then waited some more. Nothing happened. It was strange. I mean, you see all those films and when someone expects something to happen it does. Then you really do it, and nothing happens? What kind of ass-backwards shit was this? 

    Then again, it was also fun to let off a bit of steam without worrying someone was going to come for you. 

    After a few seconds, I shivered, because a blast of cold air hit me in my back. I glanced back and up, towards a fan that was still on. Within a matter of three minutes, I heard scuttling, growling and hissing. 

   “Oh, come on!” I whined at the zombies heading my way. There was four of them, each one from a different direction. “Where were you three minutes ago?”

    One of the zombies hissed and spit in my direction. I don’t think they were intentionally trying to spit at me, it could have just been the force of the hiss. But if they were it could have been them trying to curse at me.

    Frying pan at the ready, I waited. They didn’t make a move towards me, pausing maybe thirty feet far from me all around. Did they forget what they were doing?

    That’s when I realized they were sniffing, snuffling, with heads turning this way and that. Another cold blast against my back and two of them from the left and right snapped their teeth in my direction and finally charged. I yelped, despite having brought down a couple already, and dodged to the left while swinging the frying pan. It whacked Zombie #1 in the side and she staggered sideways into zombie #2 who had started to follow me along with the first. 

    I must have gotten a little too close since the left one behind me started to sway, snarled, and then lunged while grabbing hold of my arm, trying to lift it to bite. Letting out an unmanly squeal, I started twisting and swinging the frying pan into this one’s hands to get it to loosen its grip. It worked. For all of three seconds, but it was enough to pull my hands free. Now all three zombies were following after me, one with their hands reached out, another hobbled funny like it had a broken leg or ankle, and third one was swinging its shoulders from side to side as it ran for whatever reason.

    Losing my footing, I fell down onto my ass, sliding a little, and still swinging the frying pan. I think I caught one of them again, but I wasn’t entirely certain. 

    One of them, pretty sure it was Zombie #3, lunged down at me and made wild grabs for my legs. It managed to catch one and I brought my leg closer to my body. Remembering that I had the screwdrivers still in my pockets I grabbed for the one in my right pocket. Fixing the hold on it swiftly, I drove the tip of the small screwdriver into this thing’s left temple. It gurgled once, spasmed and twitched, before lying still. I couldn’t retrieve the screwdriver as the other two lunged now while the fourth still just stood there. 

    I scrambled back, trying to get distance between us. I took a chance and lunged to my feet. These things were quicker than they seemed. In a matter of seconds Zombie #1 had my left arm and Zombie #2 was keeping a tight hold on my right. The former was trying to shake the frying pan out of my hand as the latter kept jerking me back and forth, like it wanted to try and rip my shoulder out of its socket. 

_ Clang! _ The frying pan fell to the floor when the zombie squeezed hard and then shook my wrist viciously. In hindsight, trying to get their attention had probably been a terrible idea from the go. Compared to the other hordes that were roaming around town it definitely could have been worse. There could have been more. Preparing myself for the bites to come made me exhale slowly and shut my eyes tight.

_ Just whatever you do, please don’t tear out chunks of my flesh, _ I prayed to whatever god was listening, if they cared much. Was there a zombie god somewhere? 

    “My loyal children, do not eat this young man! He isn’t worth it!” I could almost hear the booming voice in my head from said god. Or maybe it was me having an eternal, hopeful debate with myself on some level. It was likely. 

    “But we’re hungry!” would come the response of the zombies in the form of hissing and growling and groaning. Maybe with some gurgling noises thrown in. 

    My arms were lifted. The heat was against my bare skin. Saliva dripping from their ravenous maws in a blinding hunger that was one of their most basic needs they wanted to try to quench. Heart thumping slowly and it seemed like time itself had slowed down drastically. 

    Next thing I know, I’m jumping because I feel something warm on the left side of my face and then my arm was free. I cracked one eye open. The zombie was dead on the ground, a knife sticking out of the top of its head from the back. I saw a blur pass by, leaping clean over the top of my head and in impossibly high jump (or at least it was impossible for me). Zombie #2 fell after having its head severed from its shoulders and it fell into a heap on the ground, a fountain of blood spraying and squirting. 

    There was a boy with white hair, past his shoulders by an inch, very pale skin to the point he was ghost-white, and what looked like a white overcoat of sorts. Then I realized the boy was _ laughing and giggling _ like an overly happy child. 

    “Ye-heh!” the boy cackled as it started to slice the fourth zombie to ribbons with a weird looking scythe. “Another one bites the dust!” He sang a little off-key. 

    The scythe started like a normal one would, but then it dipped down and looked like the blade was trying to mimic your typical lightning bolt shape. I’d never seen anything shaped like it and I was already pretty terrified at the mere shape. He was wielding it like he’d been doing it all his life. And why was he wearing fuzzy pink slippers of all things? After that, he retrieved his knife and wiped it on the zombie’s clothing carelessly.

    The boy started to run from the hardware store and I gathered enough of my wits to shout, “Hey! Wait!” then pick up my frying pan and make a mad dash after him. For someone as tiny as he was, he was damn fast. In slippers, no less! I kept waiting for one of them to fall off. 

    At the entrance to the store, the boy looked back, grinning with a cruelty that shouldn’t be on his face. His bangs were pinned back with bobby pins, four of them. Two were crossed and so were the other two likewise to create two x’s in his bangs. There were also two x’s stitched just below his right eye and a trail of them going from beneath his chin all the way into his shirt. He had on black pants, red polka dotted suspenders to hold them up, and a white long sleeved t-shirt with the top four buttons undone. Plus the white jacket. I’m also pretty sure he had knives lining the inside of his jacket in addition to the scythe casually thrown over his shoulders. With red eyes and bags beneath them, he reminded me of some sort of serial killer who liked to kill for some reason aside from the fact that he could. 

    But why save me instead of kill me instead? 

    “What’s your name?” I asked as he watched me intently. 

    “You thought you could win on your owwwwn. But you caaaan’t. Not like I can!” Another giggle and then he dashed outside and down the road. 

    I followed and spotted him running off and then disappearing down a side road. Giving an exasperated sigh, I started to follow. But instead of dashing after him, I noticed that the sun was getting lower and lower on the horizon. 

    So after walking around for about fifteen minutes, I came to another store and headed inside. I quickly walked down aisles and picked out as many cans of food as I could shove into my backpack, a manual can opener, and some blankets. I wasn’t the only one who had been here because a good portion of things had been wiped out. I decided to grab a smaller bag, which I shoved the cans, can opener, and two small blankets inside. 

    I’d spotted one person, but they ran away before I could say or do anything else, so I let it be. 

    By that time, I walked out with my two bags of goodies, screwdriver back into place and clean of blood after I swiped some dishtowels, and then a small medical kit that I thought would come in handy. 

     Within one hour I’d found a medium sized warehouse to call home that was in decent condition. The windows were mostly intact, doors firm at all entrances (yes, I checked), and nothing really creaked or groaned. The building was long, low, and probably twice as big as a house with a second story. 

    I went into every area and I checked everything twice, not willing to miss anything like I had at Hide’s house. There were enough chairs around to set them under doors, and I even moved a desk in front of one since it was closer and was an entrance. I barricaded the lower floor so something would scrape around and I would hear it. There were probably about twenty doors in total; eight on the lower level and twelve on the upper one. Scoping out the upper level, I found a supply closet I might be more comfortable in. It was of decent size, there was a door that lead out so I had an escape route if I needed to go through one of two doors. 

    After situating a blanket on the ground to provide some cushion and fixing the second one, I settled down. The sun was now almost completely diminished for the day. I took a can and a can opener and started to open some mixed fruit. I didn’t have a utensil, so when I got it open, I upended the can and slurped the fruit out with ease. I’d forgotten to mention I’d also snagged a few bottles of water, which I drank from after inhaling the fruit. I’d need to ration it and plan before going back out. 

    One can of fruit down and almost half of a bottle of water, and I settled down for the night. Sitting there in the eerie quiet I thought about the zombies I’d seen. 

    They didn’t react to the noises. So what drew them to me? I thought about it, thinking about what had happened before they came, and remembered the air that hit me before they showed up.

    Lightbulb. 

    It’d been my scent, hadn’t it? That was the only answer I had right then and was the only one that stood out. When I’d been close to them, I’d noticed that their eyes were dull and kind of washed out looking, webbed with cataracts. So their eyes weren’t good, but their sense of smell was on point, like they were bloodhounds. Apparently they were mostly deaf, too. But I didn’t understand why it took the fan or air conditioning blowing around my scent in order for them to smell me. I didn’t go near the fourth one, and it and the third one was downwind, so why did they come? Had it really been the air conditioning or something circulating? Or maybe it just heard the other zombies and were like, “Did you find a meal?!” in classic zombie speak. I wasn’t sure how that one applied, and I need to figure it out and soon. Maybe some were different. I needed to test it out, but not like that again. 

    First, I would need to find a way to try to mask my scent if I wanted to go out without being detected and as it was if any zombie came close to where I’d been, they could try to track the scent to where I was currently residing. I did know that some didn’t run as fast as others. 

    I wondered briefly if air fresheners would work to cover me up. While I pondered all of this, I’d removed my shirt and used the medical kit to clean up the bite wound on my right shoulder. It wasn’t as deep as I’d thought, but I cleaned it out as best as I could with water and put what I was pretty sure was neosporin around the wound carefully. I tried to do with with clean dishtowels to avoid causing infection from something else. It didn’t look like it was deep enough to the point that it needed stitches and for that I was glad. I just escaped the hospital and if I could help it, I would never go back to one. Setting a clean pad over the wound, I maneuvered to get some gauze to keep it in place. It was in a good position so I could wrap the gauze around my shoulder and under my armpit so it wouldn’t go anywhere. 

    Putting my shirt back on, I lay on my left side to face both entrances. I was also thankful that the wound hadn’t looked bad, either. 

    With the sun drifting lower and lower, the building was slowly encased in shadows and it was soon pitch black. Lying there, without fear or adrenaline, the tears started to fall and my thoughts wandered to Hide, to where I didn’t want them to go. They were bittersweet thoughts and they caused an ache in my chest. 

    Closing my eyelids, I could hear him; I could see him. Mostly from when we were younger and when he’d befriended me. I felt more alone now than I did earlier, here in the dark, with no one around. With no one to look to for comfort; the blanket offering little comfort as I clutched it to my body, wishing it was someone with warm skin and a kind touch. Of course, those thoughts brought Hide more, and made me wish it had been him. 

    The feelings that I’d kept hidden for so long pouring out of my throat in pathetic whimpers and soft cries as they racked my body mercilessly and made me shake. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, to anyone, but I thought that maybe if I’d found someone special in Rize, I wouldn’t have thoughts of Hide that plagued me every night. I’d turned off my mind, trying to stop from thinking terrible things had happened because with that, I’d have lost everything and where did that leave me? I know that there would be others should I find them, but Hide was the first and as such, he would linger the longest in my heart. 

    After all the excitement, my exhaustion came crashing down on me at once. I suppose I knew that on some level I would be easy to wake. I usually woke easy to begin with from being a light sleeper. Right now, that could potentially save my life. 

    With thoughts of the day and Hide, I started to doze. As I gripped a screwdriver in hand, I could only hope that in the following days I could find someone to share things with. I could find companionship. 

    Most of all, I wanted Hide. I didn’t want to be alone anymore.

* * *

Here is my [Tumblr](http://amusewithinme.tumblr.com/) for anyone who needs it. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big round of applause to my mate, Ferryn, for cleaning this up and making it better by correcting some of the mistakes I had made. I apologize for taking forever to get this chapter out, but it is finally here.   
> Next I will update We Meet Again or begin the alternate version of it.   
> If anyone is interested in Haikyuu, I will eventually be putting up a fanfiction for that, too.


	4. A Little Company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, I want to apologize that I took soooo long to update this. I had no idea where I wanted to take it, so in between writing other chapters and stories I was giving it thought. Now I know where I want it to go. Updates should be a little more regular now because of this. Do forgive me.  
> I hope that this chapter does not disappoint.

* * *

I wasn't sure exactly what woke me up. Maybe the scratching noise or maybe it was a clang. I didn't really know which one. All I was certain of was that I was no longer alone. Getting up and stuffing the blankets into the backpack and wielding my frying pan in one hand and screwdriver in another, I inched towards one of the doors in the warehouse. Light was just breaking the horizon, turning the sky dark with purples and pinks and a splash of orange. I had to remember that I was missing an eye and it was harder to keep track of things, needing to shift to accommodate for it. It was hard keeping my eyelid shut as I wasn’t used to it. In time maybe it would be easier. Or I could just keep it open and not care who saw the empty socket.

    I could also be stylish with a cool, neat eye patch or something. It depended on if I came across any eye patches. Straining to listen it was hard to tell if there were any wet gurgling or hissing. Hearing nothing but a scratching and clanging noise, it could only be assumed that maybe it wasn't a zombie. It could be someone looking to see if whoever had barricaded themselves in were still around. I wanted companionship. Did I dare risk it?

    Maybe I did dare. It could very well be someone like me.

    Despite thinking I was in the clear I couldn't help being on guard. In an apocalypse you never knew what could happen or when. It was better to be safe than sorry this way. It was easy to not make any noise as I crept out of the closet and down the stairs.

    Reaching the bottom there was a bulk of a man facing away from me. Maybe he had eaten a wrestler and a half. He had slicked back white hair with a white suit. Even this man’s dress shoes were white. I watched in fascination as he used his thumbs to push down on his fingers, popping them. In his right hand he was lazily allowing an ax to sway from front and then back in my direction. I hesitated. Before I could decide if it was better to run or swing (as if that would've done much good), he turned to face me.

    He had beady eyes and a rather rectangular face. It didn't look like he smiled much, if ever, and there was definitely no kindness in his eyes.

    “The name’s Jason. And you are?” the man asked while beginning to stalk closer.

    “K-Kaneki,” I stuttered, unable to help it. I really needed to do something about that.

    “Well, Kaneki, are you the only one here? I was looking for a place to stay and spotted this. I noticed everything was shut in. I replaced the desk I moved,” Jason said, voice showing an amount of cruelty that sent shivers up my spine.

    Steeling my nerves and forcing myself to talk clearer and enunciate, I said, “You just happened to come across this building when there are dozens of others around?”

    There were warning bells ringing in my head, causing me to stumble back away from the man. I didn't want to be here with him. I tried thinking about the other exits I could take and most of them were behind this man.

    “Are you the only one here?” Jason asked again, now beginning to swing the ax from side to side in front of him.

    Swallowing harshly, I tightened my grip on my weapons. This wasn't a fight I was going to win and it made me think of the white haired boy that saved me from the four zombies. That I wouldn't be able to handle them like he could. While this man was no zombie, I still couldn't take him. By the time my good senses had caught back up to me the man was nearly on top of me and by this time I turned and ran. I was running towards one of the back rooms, where a couple of them were while the others were behind him and now I was desperate to be out in the open; far, far away from Jason and whatever he may or may not have in store for me. I didn't really really want to find out, now or ever.

    Jason caught up to me easily with his longer strides, not even bothering to run to catch up to me. Jason shot out his foot to trip me, causing me to fall in a heap on the floor and thankfully I managed to maneuver myself to avoid stabbing myself with the screwdriver while landing mostly on my frying pan. It didn't take long before I realized this was going to get worse still.

    With a shoe on the lower portion of my left forearm, Jason pressed down hard enough until my grip loosened enough so I dropped my weapon. Twisting and turning my left arm I tried to get it loose, which caused Jason to lean forward and put most of his weight on my arm. If there was a joint there I’d be able to feel the bones grinding together from the force. Since I wasn't looking up, now using my other hand to try and shove his heavy self off of me, I never saw what he was doing until it was too late. With a gleam of silver I knew I needed to look up again.

    Too late. Even if I had looked up quicker there was nothing that could have been done for it. The pain didn't register at first because of the adrenaline coursing through me. When it did, all I could do was let out this hoarse, terrible wail of agony.

    With a _crunch!_ and _shlick!,_ my hand had been severed from my wrist. A squelching, squirting as the blood gushed from the new wound. It was red and spotted an electric, almost neon sickly blue. I couldn't help but wonder if the splotches of blue would stay in my blood forever or fade overtime. I wasn’t about to keep opening a vein from time to time to make sure, either.

    Jason released my arm and I instinctively pulled it to my chest, curling up on my side as sobs wracked my body continuously as it had last night. Why did this have to happen? I was already in recovery from another incident, both from a date gone wrong and from a healing bite wound to my shoulder which still hasn't affected me in any way, shape or form. I didn't ask for much. Companionship, true companionship, and the second person I have direct contact with after the zombie apocalypse began, in such close proximity, wanted to torture or kill me.

    When the electrical pulses ran through my arm I wasn't sure what to think or how to feel. All I could feel was the pain and thus anything more dulled or wasn't important by comparison. No reason to focus on it.

    It never registered on me that Jason had rolled me over onto my back and pinned my other arm to the ground, frying pan long having been let go. My breathing had become erratic, eyelids fluttering rapidly and what energy was still present was slowly beginning to wane to allow the pain to be in the forefront of my mind.

    Right around then was when the gunshot sounded, echoing in the empty warehouse, and then followed by two more. Jason staggered away, groaning and hissing in pain. I did see a glimpse of a tall, well-built man with dark, albeit white streaked hair and a woman with blue-purple hair and eyes of the same shade. She was holding a machete and a pair of long shears. I was also vaguely aware of another person, though I couldn't make out who as they were standing off to my blind side somewhere. The woman and man tag teamed Jason, relentless until he stopped moving. It seemed the man, rather than going for the kill, liked to toy around. The woman didn't really seem to care either way.

    The third person knelt next to me, trying to get a look at the bloody stump against my chest.

    “Get away from him, Hinami. His blood isn’t right. He could be contaminated,” the woman spoke harshly, coming over to tug away the one she called Hinami.

    The third person, female and Hinami, spoke up, “But he's injured! He must be tended to,”

    “Should I kill him, too?” the man asked. A cold barrel pressed against my temple and I whimpered, unable to form anything coherent aside from screams should I open my mouth. I didn't think they'd appreciate sudden screaming, no matter how much pain I was in.

    A tingling sensation ran up my arm and within seconds I was convulsing there on the ground. A shot rang out, missing my ear by a hair, and only later would I realize I was still alive because Hinami shoved at the other guy. Good thing they hadn’t noticed the fact that I had already been bitten.

    I was desperately trying to keep my food down, however little I managed to get into my stomach last night. I couldn't go around half-dead due to weakness from not eating and keeping food down. It wouldn’t do any good.

    The sensation I felt next was beyond bizarre. It felt like the skin at my wrist was stretching upwards, crackling and making a slithering noise of sorts. As it began to stretch upwards, it began to fill on the inside, blood dripping from it anew while being at a slower pace. Something hard formed within the mass of regenerating flesh and watching it regrow itself was enough to make me want to puke all over again; it was a bone. And I almost did until I noticed that the pain was slowly ebbing only to be replaced by numbness and the occasional tingling. It felt great to not be in so much pain.

    With fingers now fully formed and cooperative, I wiggled them and brought my hand an inch from my face to inspect it. Not a mark. No pain. The only telltale sign that anything had been amiss was the large amount of blood and the thick scarring at the wrist. Poking at it proved to be a little painful as it was tender and sore to the touch; as long as it was left alone it was fine. So maybe the serum didn’t work as intended. Maybe in order for it to work any limbs had to be lost after it was administered rather than before, like my eye? Doctor Psycho was onto something all right. But it also made me wonder, had I been born immune to whatever he unleashed onto the world now? I didn’t have any idea.

    Perhaps there was someone out there who would know what to do or who knew someone else that would be of more use. If they could already begin to figure this out then not all hope or partial hope would be lost to a helpless plague showcased in so many horror films I’d bingewatched. This could also be my way of stopping myself from slipping into depression and keeping it from swallowing me whole, making it hard to return from, but if this is what it took then so be it. I wouldn’t stay overly hopeful, just enough to the point where I wouldn’t be disappointed if nothing came of it. If people had to keep fighting then that was what needed to be done. That was all there was to it.

    I lifted my head to look at the three new people who had found and then saved me from a dismembering. The older woman, around my age at twenty-one, was staring at me with her left eye wide. Her hair dusted the tops of her shoulders, appearing rather bouncy with bunny clips in white holding her bangs in place to keep them out of her right eye. The guy had glasses that he pushed up and it caused a white glare to slip across them. How did people pull that off? Was it only possible if you had an evil bone in your body and it allowed it to show by way of how you pushed your glasses up or what? There was barely any light filtering into the warehouse and he managed a villain glare. The two of them were wearing trench coats, him in a black turtleneck and blue slacks with dress shoes and her in an open blouse with a medium length skirt and flats. Despite the trench coat, both white, hers was a feminine fit.

    The little girl - not exactly little as she seemed like she was around seventeen or so - was staring with wide eyes and mouth agape. She had light brown hair cut into a bob, bangs longer towards her chin, darker and warmer brown eyes, and was dressed much like her adult female companion, without a trench coat, and her blouse was white with a pink skirt versus the lavender and black scheme of the other. There was a headband in her  - presumably Hinami - hair with two four leaf clovers nearly stacked atop each other on the right side.

    “My name is Kaneki. Who-who are you?” I asked as I tentatively sat up. The woman held up her machete and I noticed that Hinami didn’t have a weapon. Or that’s what I thought until she took the shears and held them at the ready like she would sooner cut off my head than introduce herself. “I’m not “contaminated,” as you put it. Believe it or not I think I’m immune to whatever going’s on,” taking a chance, I shifted around my shirt and gauze to bare the bite mark at my shoulder.

    The three of them cast glances at each other, defensive stances already in place. Whatever they were before it made two of three wary and cautious.

    “All right, fine. We’ll take you with us, but the second you show changes, we’re killing you,” the man said.

    “Whoa, taking me with you? Where are you going?” I asked as I slowly raised myself to my knees. “By the way, I got bitten last night. I dunno how long it takes to travel, but I survived a whole night.”

    “We’re trying to stay ahead of the hoards. If you really were bitten last night . . . You would have turned by now,” the woman said coldly, Hinami paling a bit before tears gathered in her eyes. However they knew that it must have been someone close; parents, siblings, or other blood relatives.

    I didn’t say anything, just nodded and then nodded some more when she said, “I’d be interested to hear your story, though. Must be fascinating.”

    “I’m Hinami. This is Touka,” Hinami, now confirmed, pointed to the woman and then the man, “and this is Arima.” Hinami bent, smiling as she held out her hands to me. It was such a warm smile and gaze that it made my insides quake and tremble. The last time I’d had such a motherly look was . . . never. I always saw my mother try to be strong for my sake, trying not to crack under pressure, but she’d never once spared me such a look. Grabbing her hands, I stood on shaky legs before I retrieved my screwdriver and frying pan, along with both bags. Getting a look at Jason, I felt a swell of pride. He had numerous bullet holes and slashes all over him. His white suit was completely ruined by the sheer amount of blood that was coating him. It seemed that a few arteries had been nicked before he was put out of his misery with a bullet to the brain.

    “I think it would do us some good to stop a store to get car fresheners or something to mask our scents to see if it helps. I noticed that for some it attracts them - finding us by our smell.”

    They didn’t seem to believe me, if their skeptical expressions were anything to go off on, so I added, “Hey, if you don’t want to believe me, that’s on you. But I’m raiding a store just in case. Anything else we’ll find out along the way,”

    Arima snorted before jerking his head, signaling they were leaving. They were still giving me skeptical looks, though at least they had been toned down a bit.

    While they were leaving, me included, Hinami asked what happened to me, gesturing to the gauze around my head. So I began to explain the dates with Rize, the fact she wanted to eat me and had only gotten a part of me - my eye - and ate it. When she came after me how I ran into her kitchen and started throwing open cabinets looking for a weapon since I hadn’t thought a knife would be enough to stop her and I wanted a bit of a longer reach now that I thought about it. I confessed to hitting her and then killing her, not stopping until she was entirely still. I told them how I woke in the hospital yesterday and then the “good doctor” had given me something to try to regrow my eye and it didn’t work then, but worked later after I’d had my hand chopped off. I told them I suspected that if it didn’t turn you into a zombie then it would regrow anything you lost after it was administered, like with me. They were listening to me intently, Arima and Touka even giving me approving looks from the corners of their eyes after my admission of murder, looking at me with a new light. I knew I wasn’t particularly strong, nor did I seem like a fighter or killer, but where my life was truly concerned and I could actually make it, I fought to stay this way. Then I continued saying I ran from the hospital, found an abandoned hardware store to grab weapons, a clothing store - as I was in hospital garb when I left - and I said I’d stolen shoes off of a dead person. If they turned into a zombie they weren’t exactly going to miss them now were they? I concluded with cleaning myself up, wrapping my shoulder, and finding a place to sleep before I woke this morning to find Jason awaiting someone.

    “Oh, and while in the hardware store is when I conducted a little experiment. Some of the zombies look like they have cataracts so I don’t think they can see very well, if at all, but they’re like bloodhounds if they catch your scent. I almost didn’t get away and was saved by a little boy in pink slippers. He was fast and carried a weirdly shaped scythe,”

    “You said _some_ of them find you by smell. What about the others?” Touka asked, falling in step beside me.

    “That’s the thing. I don’t know just yet. Four of them surrounded me, but one didn’t attack even with me being so close. I don’t think noise played a part in it, it didn’t fit. I haven’t figured it out yet. Give it time and I’m sure it will. The doctor was keeping his experiments in the basement of the hospital.”

    Even as I retold my story, having done so just once, my voice wasn’t as shaky. Maybe I’d really come to terms with Rize and the fact I killed her. In this place I couldn’t afford to be hesitant when it came to saving my life or someone else’s should they become friends. I also shouldn’t be too close to someone, just in case they weren’t like me.

    “If this doctor was keeping his experiments in the basement then someone must know about them. As a doctor he should’ve been keeping notes, too; the different things he’s noticed, changes in how it affected each patient. If he was even using other patients for these then someone is bound to know something had been off with the man,” Arima stated while we were carefully scoping out a store. When it was clear I went ahead and scooped up some fresheners. Whether or not they worked was debatable, but it was still worth a shot. Maybe I smelled like meat (I probably did to them). I took out one that was packaged and stuffed it into my shirt pocket and another in my back pocket at my jeans. If anything it would also keep it at bay when I started to smell from the lack of a proper shower.

    “He did. He kept notes on me when he injected it into my IV line.” I frowned, absently rubbing at my arm where the IV line had been.

    “We could go down to his lab, or whatever he wanted to call it, and check out his notes and findings. If we don’t find anything there maybe we’ll find it at his home,” Hinami suggested as she also swiped a few fresheners, having taken me seriously.

    “Hinami, we don’t even know where he lives,” Arima said with a roll of his eyes.

    “Well, if the hospital _is_ where it broke out, then no one would be there to guard information and files, right? All we’d have to do is look through them for the address he gave.” Hinami reasoned. Everyone stared at her. Why did no one else come to that conclusion?

    Well, someone had to eventually.

    “That’s not a bad idea. The only problem is that the hospital is going to be the opposite of what you guys were aiming for, which is a zombieless zone. It originated there and there’s a lot of people in it, so most of them are likely still there,” I said. I didn’t want to do this alone, not any of it, but if I absolutely needed to then I’d have no choice.

    Arima and Touka looked at each other since it seemed that Hinami was already on my side. Touka sighed and started in the direction of the hospital, saying over her shoulder, “If there’s any way to get an upper hand on this, I say we take it. Better to do it now then wait until we’re halfway across town. The hospital is four blocks that way,” she pointed in the direction she was already heading. Everyone moved to catch up with her.

    Touka was gorgeous and sensual, but she had an icy demeanour. She kept giving me and Arima death glares while it softened each time it landed on Hinami.

    Arima was handsome while being a little on the creepy side. He reminded me of a doctor who would sooner dissect you than help you. Hinami was pretty, still having not grown up fully, as she looked younger than she probably was.

    As we walked back to the hospital I set the screwdriver into my pocket, frying pan moving to my left hand while my right rubbed at the scar at my wrist. As we went I wasn’t surprised to find that I wasn’t too broken up over the fact I lost a portion of a limb. After all, it grew back, didn’t it? That didn’t mean I would be careless, oh no, I’d be the opposite. I wouldn’t want to lose another limb since the pain was terrible. It stopped after a few minutes or so until the numbness crept up on you. I hated pain all around and would rather avoid it if I could. The entire incident so far had been pushed to the back of my mind with a new goal in the forefront.

    “So, what’re your stories?” I enquired after a few minutes of silent walking. They knew my story, it was only far to ask to see if they wanted to divulge that information to me.

    While it didn’t seem that Touka or Arima were going to be doing any talking, it seemed Hinami could talk for the both of them combined. Touka and Arima took the lead with Hinami hanging back with me. “Touka and I lived in the same neighborhood. Childhood friends. Anyway we were outside messing around, tending to the garden in our backyard when we heard people screaming. It was about the middle of the day so we went to go check it out. All of a sudden we see a bunch of heavily blue-veined, pale people chomping on and pigging out on anyone who dared come closed to them,” as Hinami explained, I assumed that’s why Hinami had a pair of shears with her. It did not explain why Touka had a machete of all things. “We ran to my mother’s house which was a couple blocks away. When we got there it seemed that the wave had already reached there, having passed through before getting to us,” Hinami’s voice started to quiver subtly as she talked, remembering something unsavory. “When we got there a zombie had already gotten ahold of her. Touka grabbed the machete my mother had been on her way to get when one of them discovered her as she hid. My mother had kept one around, just in case, and she didn’t want a gun, so she went with a machete. I don’t know why other than she said it made her feel safer. After Touka had cut the zombie to ribbons I went to her,”

    Hinami broke down and started to cry, shears off to one side while her shoulders shook. It seemed she hadn’t been able to properly mourn her mother yet. Touka was looking over with mournful eyes. While they didn’t water she had either cared a great deal for the woman or she hurt because she couldn’t ease Hinami’s suffering. It may have also been both. Touka then fell in line beside Hinami to take the shears from her before wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Touka murmured quietly, “It took two minutes for her to fully turn. First she was confused by everything going on, her veins brighter, and then she tried to attack Hinami when we tried to rush her to the bathroom to look her over.”

    I felt so bad that I moved closer and wrapped my arm around Hinami’s waist, resting my cheek against the top of her head. I expressed my condolences this way as saying “I’m sorry,” couldn't quite convey my regret that Hinami had to witness such a thing. Hinami tried to lean into both Touka and I, with Touka eventually pulling me closer so Hinami could have double the comfort.

    “I hate to break this up, but we’ve got company,” Arima interrupted, pausing a few steps ahead.

    Leaning to see around Arima I could see a small hoard of about six zombies limping and swaying out of the mouth of an alley, teeth chattering and clicking. And that was when I realized we were standing downwind just as they were emerging. A bunch of their heads swiveled in our direction and we fanned out, preparing for what was to come. As one all six of them raced towards us and we each took a stance. Arima sighted. Three shots rang out and three zombies dropped to the ground, each with a bullet wound in their foreheads. I tucked my frying pan beneath an arm, took out a screwdriver and ran towards the nearest one. Hinami and Touka did the same as me, lifting weapons with little to no hesitation (little hesitation on Hinami’s part). I found that if I didn't think about what I was about to do, what I needed to do, then I wouldn't hesitate; instead I would go right into it with no problems. Coming up to one zombie I noticed that the veins were duller, skin darker and hair and fingernails falling out/off. The sockets of the eyes were even sunken . . . Almost like this zombie was ill. Then, out of nowhere, it stopped a few feet from me and started sniffing in Arima's direction before changing course for him. As he passed me I threw my weight at it and plunged the screwdriver into the temple. Distinctly I remember hearing an inhuman shriek before a snipping noise then a thud; it masked another noise followed by a second thud that echoed the first. One zombie had been decapitated by shears with the other having a machete sticking out of its forehead (Touka placed her foot on it before yanking the blade free only to clean it on the zombie’s clothing).

    “And you thought that the car freshener idea was stupid,” I said triumphantly while looking to Arima. He only clicked his tongue at me and sneered.

    “I didn’t say it was stupid,” he argued back.

    “The look on your face implied it,” I made a face back at him before looking to Touka and Hinami, the latter who seemed to have gotten a hold of herself in a few minutes. Hinami knew the gravity of the situation we were all in and it changed her in an instant. Arima and Touka weren’t like that; they were always ready and cautious, knowing something could happen at the drop of a dime.

    “Say, where did you learn to shoot?” I turned back to Arima, who was checking how many bullets he had left.

    “Police academy. I go to the shooting range regularly to keep myself sharp. Guess it came in handy this time, eh?” Arima also looked to Touka and Hinami. After I retrieved my screwdriver, cleaned it off, and set it back where it belonged we went on our way again.

    Hinami seemed in better spirits now that she had sobbed for the loss of her mother, however short a time it may have been. Touka was still sticking close to her side and was now a little more alert now that she didn’t need to focus her attention elsewhere. No matter how hard she tried to appear cold there was a softness to her gaze when she looked to Hinami doubled with the fact she kept looking over to her on occasion.

    “It did. You should stock up, too, you know. I think there’s a shop around here somewhere for you to do that,” I suggested, trying to calculate where such a place was. I vaguely remembered one on the other side of town in the direction they’d originally been heading. I was hoping that Arima wasn’t running low on bullets. With such accuracy it was good to have him handy. “How did you meet with Touka and Hinami?”

    “I was walking around town last night and Touka almost decapitated me coming around a corner,” his voice was a susurration. With his voice that was it was nice - and I begrudgingly admit this -  to listen to.

    I felt my lips quirk upwards and gave Touka a look, which she couldn’t see. “Did she now? Going around decapitating people, are you?”

    Touka just gave me a dirty look over her shoulder. Arima didn’t appear to be so cold towards me (maybe he saw that I wasn’t completely useless) and Hinami already seemed taken with me at this point (I had a feeling this was how she typically was).

    The rest of the way there was spent idly chatting, mostly me with Hinami with Arima occasionally chiming in and Touka pretending she didn’t hear us. We spotted a shop a block away from the hospital that Hinami wanted to check out - since we had all the time in the world apparently - before coming out with a few dresses and boots she could fight in if she needed to and stuffing them in a bag she had.

    When we got to the hospital everyone was on edge. No one knew how bad it was going to be; no one thought it would be so easy. I pushed open a door while Arima and Touka took stances, preparing for any zombies that may be there and sniffing around. Arima and Touka went inside to scope it out a little bit, steps light and swift while being efficient, though I was certain I should probably have been one of them. We didn’t know who else was immune, if they were, and it wasn’t particularly okay to be alone when that’s what you feared most. We took the stairwell down to the basement of the hospital; it would’ve been tricky to get into when there was a lock on it once upon a time. We would’ve had to raid the Doctor’s corpse if he was even dead and not undead.

    There was a few different rooms branching off from the main one, each looking like containment rooms large enough to fit a maximum of thirty people each if everyone stood. The glass separating them had various cracks and hairline fractures spidering out from the original point of impact. There was no one around, not a soul or the undead. Computers were up and running, sliders full of blood, papers littering the ground everywhere. Hinami went over to a computer and started clicking around on the mouse, scrolling through it while Touka looked over her shoulder curiously. Arima was keeping a close eye on the door and checking out corners where they may potentially hide. I looked around on stacks of paper until I managed to find some handwritten notes and started to flip through them:

 

Patient Number: 34.

Signs include hair shortening after lengthening, veins becoming neon to the point of glowing. Loss of limbs instead of regeneration. Relies more on sight. Possible heat signatures and prefers to go after females.

  


Patient Number: 79.

Loss of limb, prolonged pain, bleeding from all orifices before death with no resurrection.

 

Patient Number: 3.

Increased speed, foaming at the mouth. Patient had cancer and all symptoms were worse: unable to function as well as the others, darker complexion, loss of follicles and relied on touch and smell.

  


    All right, I thought, so the factors are different for some and that explains the zombie I saw earlier. The sicker the host, the sicker the zombie is in appearance. I flipped through more of them and they were all along the same lines, jumping from patient number to patient number. I couldn’t tell who they were.

    It wasn’t until I found spotted something else that quickly caught my attention:

 

Patient Number: 86.

A success. Veins turned back to normal, functions are proper after leg regeneration. Senses are normal, no elevation. Scar around upper thigh where the limb was regrown and despite the craving for human skin, still considered a success.

 

    I felt my blood run cold. It seemed that the doctor had lied to me when he said that no one had survived his experiments. I knew exactly who it was, or I suspected.

    “Kaneki, you went out with someone named Rize, right?” Hinami looked over from the computer monitor, pointing to it. “Is this her?”

    I went over to inspect and felt like dry heaving. It was Rize all right. “That’s her. What does it say?”

    “‘Kamishiro, Rize. Admitted to the hospital after a freak accident with a murderer. Limb was severed off and had to be reattached. Doctor Kanou was put in charge. Full recovery was expected with only twinges of pain at the minimum from the reattachment sight. Patient stayed for a week before leaving without a release form, Doctor Kanou would personally check up on her,’ and then there’re details of her date of birth, height, weight, et cetera, et cetera. I figured this would be what you cared about most, though,” Hinami looked up after she was done reading.

    “Back up. The woman that tried to eat you had this serum tested on her and it worked? But it didn’t work for the others?” Arima scowled while leaning over to look at the screen as well.

    “When she was lying on the floor I remember seeing a scar on her thigh. I hadn’t seen it before and it didn’t seem relevant at the time. I found notes and she must have been Patient 86. In the notes it says there was a craving for humans. I guess she wasn’t always like this, but you know. I’m just glad I didn’t have sex with her; I don’t want to find out if she grew teeth, you know, _there_ , too,” Hinami giggled at my wording while Touka let out an exasperated sigh.

    “Okay, but why does it say that the limb was reattached here in the system, but here it says that regeneration was possible?” Arima pointed out, now reading the notes from over my shoulder.

    I thought on it for a moment. “It says that he was put in charge. He could have excused anyone else from entering, or those that assisted him knew about his experiments. Either way, he definitely didn’t reattach her limb and injected her with it instead.”

    “You said you killed her. But now after knowing the serum worked on her . . . Are you sure she’s dead?” Touka brought up the very question that terrified me.

    “I thought that - I could’ve sworn -” I pursed my lips together before answering truthfully, “I’m not sure and that’s what scares me. We could check out her home - I don’t want to - but for the purpose of checking . . .” I trailed off.

    “Hey, Touka. Yoriko lives in her area, doesn’t she?” Hinami interrupted while pointing to the screen again.

    Touka paled a bit as she noticed the area and address. “We’re going. We need to check it out,”

    “Who’s Yoriko?” Arima and I asked at the same time.

    “Touka’s one and only loooo -” Touka flicked Hinami on her temple, causing her to stop mid-song.

    Arima and I gave amused expressions, my own problems momentarily forgotten. “As much as I hate to go back, if there’s someone you know there in that area we might as well check to see. It’s in the next town over, so I don’t know how bad it may or may not be. But for future reference, some of the zombies go by scent, touch, and sight. But they could have a combination of them. Also, some of them who look darker, sickly -”

    “Like the one you took down,” Touka interrupted now, causing me to look at her with an eyebrow lift. “I notice things. Keep going.”

    “Well, those hosts were already sick. Cancer or something.” Arima took the notebook from my hands and started flipping through it himself, passing his gun to me. I held it out like one held a baby away from them like they were a ticking time-bomb.

    “It says in the back here that infection spreads by bite. No shit. Anyone who’s ever seen a zombie movie could tell you that. Scratches are also infectious, contaminated blood and saliva in already open wounds. Again, anything your typical cliché zombie movie will tell you. The only thing that isn’t added is the cliché way to kill them.” Arima muttered while going through it. “And be careful with that,” he scolded while making an absent jab to his gun.

    “I don’t like guns, nor have I ever shot one. Hurry up and take it back, Arima,” Touka moved far away from me and Hinami reached up to take the gun herself.

    Arima tossed the notebook aside, took his gun back and holstered it. He went around to scour the lab, looking for more information if possible. He said he found vials of something and looking over to it, I knew it was the same stuff that had been injected into me. I wasn’t too happy about seeing it.

    “That would be it, Arima, what he injected into me.”

    Arima pocketed a few vials. “If we can find someone who can analyze these things then it’ll be better. Maybe they can reverse what’s been done. But they’d probably need your blood or Rize’s, Kaneki. Maybe both. I don’t know why it worked for Rize and only worked on you after the fact, but maybe with someone else’s help we’ll figure it out some way.”

    “We should get going. We’re wasting light.” Touka said while she was already on her way out, Hinami trailing behind her.

    Arima and I followed afterwards, me glancing back to the lab that had started it all. While the Doctor had had good intentions the outcome just wasn’t worth it. On their way out they passed by a few zombies but these ones appeared to focus on touch alone since they shifted subtly when Hinami accidentally stepped a little too harshly.

    Stepping outside it was still early, probably only around noon now or so. I snagged bags of chips and then stuffed them into my backpack. They were trying to decide when we should take a rest to eat and recharge as I was preoccupied with drinking the rest of a water bottle from last night. I stopped listening when my vision tunneled on something a little ways down and it was bright orange before disappearing down the side street. It was a shoe and one I would recognize from anywhere. Empty water bottle falling from my fingers, I ran forward, hope swelling in my chest and fear causing my heart to thunder equally.

    I couldn’t help the yell that tore from my throat as I ran to catch up with the figure that disappeared from sight. I’d also seen the shorts that went that way.

    “HIDE!” I all but wailed, the desperation evident in my voice. I didn’t notice that Touka, Hinami, and Arima were yelling after me in surprise, telling me to wait up for them. I didn’t care about that right then. I wanted to see if it was who I thought it was, already being certain it was him.

* * *

 

I have a [Tumblr](http://amusewithinme.tumblr.com/) if you would like to give it a go over. Previews will be posted there a few days before the chapter actually comes out. Any delays and such will be posted there so you are not left in the dark. I follow back should you follow me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feed me some love, new/old readers.


	5. Separation and Confession.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ciellux, when you commented I was ironically working on this chapter.  
> Cheerioi, I was thinking on it, and I thought, well, why the hell not for a white haired Kaneki with him becoming a grade A badass? We will see more of that for sure.   
> On that note, I had a few distractions which prevented me from writing here and there. It was my birthday and then Hurricane Matthew over a week ago to name two.  
> I know that the other chapters are in a different perspective, but I found that I like writing this way instead, so I will probably be fixing up the other chapters eventually.

* * *

Kaneki wasn't sure who or what kept him going in that moment as the only thing that mattered was reaching another goal and the person at the end of it. There was a burst of energy that had come from nowhere, almost as if Kaneki had been possessed by something. There was a zombie on the ground in front of a building, darker than the rest as an indicator the host had been sick prior to infection. As if it was waiting for death to truly claim it so the process of whatever lay beyond death could take place.

    Kaneki rounded the corner, ignoring the shouts that still rang out behind him, with an eye that frantically scanned the area. But he didn't stop. He couldn’t. He needed to see him, needed to alleviate the building fear in his chest and the ache that hurt each time it pulsed.

_ Please be okay, please be okay, _ a phrase was chanted like a mantra in his head, unable to be helped.

    Kaneki rounded another corner, to the right, and his heart stuttered in his chest while his feet never faltered, instead moving against the pavement more. Faster. Harder.

    In the glint of the afternoon light pale orange hair turned strawberry blonde, longer than when they were in high school. It made Hide look more handsome and rugged, almost, versus when they were younger when he looked bedraggled like he only brushed his hair once a week if one was lucky.

    But this wasn't what caught his attention fast. His long-time friend was surrounded by three zombies, each closing in as Hide stumbled backwards while swinging around his big, bulky headphones in an attempt to stun them long enough to get away. When he rounded the corner he had shed his bags and only now was wielding his trusty frying pan and one screwdriver.

    Kaneki zipped past Hide, swinging his frying pan and cracking a zombie up in its jaw, head snapping back while thrusting the screwdriver into the skull of the one to his right. The third wound up with a small bullet wound in the center of its forehead, dropping. Kaneki resumed his whaling on the far left one until brain matter and blood was arcing over his head, flashbacks of when he’d pummeled Rize flickering in front of his eye until the dead was still once more. Suddenly he wasn't outside anymore, but instead inside of a little log house that continued to torment him.

_ You taste so good! I must have more, _ Kaneki could've sworn her voice was in his head.

_ Shut up, you psychopathic bitch, _ he responded irritably. Rize was not going to ruin his life. No more. No more. No - 

    “Kaneki!” A voice shouted behind him. Who was it? Had someone come to help him, get away from Rize?

    Whirling around, one eye visible and wide, and swinging around the frying pan, something shivered inside Kaneki, his scalp tingling. Hide’s warm eyes greeted him, full of concern. Footfalls from his three other companions until they skipped to stops.

    “You.” Arima addressed Hide curtly. “Are you infected?” Arima had his gun lowered, three inches or so up from his hip. 

    No one was aware of the internal turmoil Kaneki had been subjected to: images fading and crinkling around the edges, decaying and falling away to bring him back to the present, Rize glimmering at his peripheral vision with that wide, sadistic grin, and the trembling of his hands that was so subtle it would've gone unnoticed if Hide didn't know him, knowing that the sudden tenseness was to hide the tremors.

    “I asked you a question. Are. You. Infected?” Arima growled, enunciating the question carefully and spacing it out. He was now prodding Hide with the gun in his shoulder. 

    Hide blinked owlishly, not understanding at first as he’d been watching Kaneki with concern. Realization soon painted his features. “Wh - No! No, no. I'm clean.” He started lifting various pieces of fabric to show off skin when Arima’s agitation became apparent; tugging at his collar, fussing with his sleeves, lifting up his shorts higher up his thighs to bare more skin. There was a chunk missing from Hide’s sleeve, relatively small and baring some smooth, bloodless skin.

    The fear that had skittered up and down his spine slowly vanished. 

    Hearing those words had Kaneki snapping back to the present. He whispered reverently, “Hide?” 

   Said man turned his head to look at Kaneki, whose throat was closing up. “Kaneki.”

    A dam that Kaneki hadn't known was simmering inside him broke open and he couldn't help the half-sob, half-laugh that escaped him. “Hide!” Kaneki now wailed, frying pan clattering noisily to the pavement. Without anything further Kaneki launched himself at Hide, gathering him in a bear hug. Hide hadn’t been expecting such a violent reaction and so they both toppled to the pavement. Never mind the ache in his arms from the scratches he undoubtedly just sustained.

    Hide was looking at him with an incredulous look; full of wonder with hands that moved up from the middle of Kaneki’s back up to his hair to pat at it. The elation that Kaneki felt was too great that he didn't think he could fully contain it. He didn't want to. Hide had been there for him since they befriended one another, always caring for him, always making sure he was healthy. It was the one constant thing in his life.

    “When did you get white streaks in your hair?” Hide whispered.

    Kaneki blinked twice before he could answer. “What? My hair’s what?” He sat up, straddling Hide’s waist, before tugging at strands of hair trying to see its colour. From what Kaneki could see his hair was its usual pitch black. “I don't see -”

_ Snip! _

    Kaneki’s jaw dropped as Hinami snipped off a piece of his hair. It dropped even further when he saw the white, glinting strands as it fell to land on Hide’s side over his clothing.

    “Why is it white?” Kaneki’s voice was gradually getting louder with each syllable as he started to tug at his hair even more to see some of the elusive colouring.

    “It was like that when we found you. Kind of assumed you knew it was like that,” Arima shrugged.

    Kaneki’s voice was much shriller than he would've liked. “Because this is the reaction of someone in the know!”

    “Maybe it’s a side effect?” Hinami suggested.

    “I’d be wary if I were you. Who knows the full extent of what this shit can do,” Arima’s hand idly went to a pocket.

    “Side effect of what?” Hide pushed himself to his elbows, eyes narrowing.

    “We need to go.” Touka addressed them curtly, jerking her chin ahead of them were a couple zombies were swaying.

    “Grab your boy toy and let's go. We can all chat on the way there.” Arima hauled Kaneki to his feet before doing the same to Hide, so they started walking after a moment.

    “He isn't my boy toy,” Kaneki grumbled loud enough to be heard.

    “By the way, I think the white is hot,” Hide casually threw in while inspecting his fingernails. 

    “What was that about him not being your boy toy?” Arima threw a smirk over his shoulder. Meanwhile, Kaneki’s cheeks were flaming as he spluttered, heat creeping into his cheeks and down his throat.

    “But seriously, what's this about a side effect?”

    This began Kaneki’s fourth - or so, he wasn’t keeping count - time in retelling his story (after doing quick introductions). Including how they stumbled upon the Doctor’s notes and space in the basement, what had been injected into him - Arima took out a vial to show him - and then Kaneki’s escape, the warehouse with Jason, and finally up to where Kaneki had taken off after him.

    “Wait, you regrew a limb? Let me see!” Hide exclaimed, huddling closer and crowding Kaneki, whose heart rate picked up.

    He pushed up the sleeve and showed the scar around his wrist before Hide grabbed his forehead in one hand and the other holding his own hand. It was such an incredibly tender touch. His eyes were piercing and unforgiving.

    “Does it hurt?” Hide nibbled at his lower lip.

    Kaneki couldn't stop the blush that fought its way back. “Not anymore, no,”

    “How much did it hurt?”

    “He literally regrew a damn hand. How do you think?” Touka snapped at him.

    Hinami just rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind her, she's grouchy.”

    “So,” Hide started slowly. “Was it some, like, nifty Deadpool shit going on, or what?” Hide’s tone was innocent. His eyes were concerned and he now held Kaneki’s hand, fingers rubbing lightly at the scar.

    “Pretty much, yeah.” Kaneki confirmed before hesitating. “Hide?”

    “Mmh?”

    “I went to your house yesterday and I saw blood everywhere in your bedroom. If you weren't bitten, what - what happened?” 

    “Oh, well,” Hide cleared his throat, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I went home after a run to shower and change before I went to go see you. After I was showered and dressed I heard my mom screaming in the kitchen, I guess she had gone to check the mail while I was busy. I ran into the living room to find her fighting off three Blues and -”

    “Blues?” Hinami's eyebrows raised a bit in confusion.

    “Zombies. The undead. Our worst nightmares. Blues. They're more blue than anything,” Hide offered, with no hint of sarcasm or exasperation. “Anyway, she was fighting off three and I went to help her. After we got them off and the door shut I noticed that she was starting to change, a lighter blue than the others. All of a sudden she charged me, so I ran to my bedroom. Come to find out someone had broken into my bedroom, kind of my fault for leaving the window cracked, but whatever. He wasn't a threat. My mother lunged at me and he charged her instead, he'd originally made it to my bedroom to escape the horde of Blues. Paul, we'll call him Paul because I don't know his name, was injured and bleeding everywhere before he managed to shove my mother out into the hall and shut the door. She slammed and rattled the door and eventually she started to open it, so Paul staggered over and I dragged him out my window and into some bushes in the neighboring house.

    “I noticed that he was starting to change and I took off. I went to the hospital anyway and it was crawling with Blues and screaming people. Couldn't get to you, so I've been lingering around just in case. It paid off.” There was a look on Hide’s face that Kaneki couldn't quite read.

    “The chunk missing from your shirt?” Hinami poked at the torn edges.

    “My mom tried to take a bite out of me and missed skin,” Hide grunted.

    Hide was also keeping a firm grip on Kaneki since learning of the experimentation and hand removal. It actually happened when Kaneki had said what happened with Rize, but he was trying to ignore some of the touch in order to continue his tale. He squeezed Hide’s hand upon learning of his mother; they hadn't exactly been close, but it was enough to make him feel something over her turning.

    “That isn't very nice,” Hinami sighed.

    “You know what the say: Don't trust anyone in a zombie apocalypse, not even your mother, because she is also liable to eat you.”

    “Yes, though that phrase has always been said playfully, never seriously until now.” Arima chimed in gruffly.

    Hide just snorted a response and waved his hand.

    From then on they engaged in idle chatter - they might have stopped to rob a few stores on the way - to pass the time. They ran into at least ten separate zombies or Blues as Hide insisted when they came across them. He swung his headphones at them long enough to stun them before prancing away; Kaneki would later give him some of his weapons and a car freshener (Hide gave him a strange look before accepting it without question or complaint).

    Everyone paused at the mouth of Rize’s neighborhood, Kaneki swallowing audibly enough that Hide moved closer to him.

    “We’ll go this way. You check Rize's house,” Touka nodded in the direction she needed to go, for her supposed love, based on Hinami’s teasing.

    Kaneki gave a jerky nod, watching her, Hinami, and Arima drift off a block away. They knew where Rize’s house was, having seen the address.

    “Time to investigate!” Hide hummed while strolling along, arm draping over his shoulders and steering him down the street.

    Kaneki was fiddling with his frying pan. He was trying not to think about the flowers that Hide had sent to him, the warm looks he’d been getting nonstop over the past few hours, and the light, reassuring touches. For years Kaneki had been hiding his feelings for his best friend and now in the middle of a zombie apocalypse they demanded his attention because he could lose Hide at any moment if he wasn't immune like Kaneki was. He was done trying to keep them hidden out of fear, of losing Hide above all else in case it was one-sided. Should he take a chance? He wanted to. He desperately wanted to. He was afraid of losing Hide’s friendship most of all.

     Stopping at Rize’s door his cheeks ballooned as he exhaled noisily. So far, they hadn't met anymore zombies. In fact, this area was mostly deserted aside from the occasional dog they'd seen running around to rummage in the trash. It was odd. Animals didn't seem to be affected because of the virus. They seemed equally immune to it. Maybe it just wasn't compatible with their systems.

    “You wanna stay out here and I'll check it out?” Hide leaned over to whisper in his ear. Kaneki fought down a violent shiver. 

    “I can handle this. I'll be fine.” He soldiered on to push ahead of Hide and inside.

    He was surprised when he didn't immediately do a sweep of this place and keep his frying pan raised high. Instead his frame was just lightly coiled with tension and waiting for the slightest of instances if he needed to spring into action. He didn't voice it, but he was worried that Rize wouldn't be here. If the infection worked on him, after he'd had his hand amputated, he couldn't be sure that Rize’s damage hadn't also been healed. Just because he  _ thought _ he didn't see her chest rise and fall didn't mean it wasn't present.

     Walking around through the house he was on guard, checking one half of the house while Hide checked the other half wielding a screwdriver. Coming into the kitchen, Kaneki froze in his spot. All of the things that had fallen out of cabinets had been shoved off to the sides to make a path. Where the puddle of blood was . . . there was no body. Only drag marks and footprints in the sludge. Kaneki didn't understand why his blood had flecks of blue from the virus while Rize's didn't. It could fade over time. But what if it didn’t?

    “I’m sorry.” Hide put a hand on his shoulder once joining him in the kitchen. Strangely enough, he was calm and collected. Hide was acting as his grounding element, and Kaneki felt as if he was siphoning courage and strength from him.

    “For what?” Kaneki sighed. He leaned into Hide’s hand eagerly.

    “I, uh, I pushed you into going out with Rize. It’s my fault that all this happened to you, and I'm so sorry. You lost an eye because of me. You wound up in the hospital, sick and infected.” Hide wrapped one arm around Kaneki’s chest and the other around his waist. He put his head in the crook of Kaneki’s neck, who couldn't help the hitching of his breath in a half-sigh, half-sob.

    He turned to face Hide, lifting his hands to cup Hide’s face. He spoke forcefully, “It isn't your fault. I went out with her willingly. It wasn’t you who put me in the hospital, it was her because she wanted to eat me. If she prays on people, if not me then it would've been someone else instead. I wound up sick and infected because my doctor was a weirdo and a touch sadistic. He used me as an experiment. You made me feel better; I saw your flowers.”

    “But -”

    Kaneki silenced him by covering his mouth with his hand. He could feel Hide’s lips brushing over the skin of his palm and it was electrifying. No good night kisses he had shared with anyone else, male or female, had felt as good as Hide’s lips ghosting over his palm as he tried to speak anyway. Taking away his hand Kaneki’s eyes darted up to Hide’s lips. Curse his shorter frame, always needing to look up at Hide.

_ Fuck it all, _ the thought flitted through his mind.

    The hand at Hide’s cheek moved to the back of his head to tug him down while Kaneki surged up onto his toes, heart thundering in his chest. When he crashed his lips to Hide’s he couldn’t tell if his mind was warning him that this was a bad idea or if it was enjoyable. Hide gasped before groaning softly and allowing his hands to dip to Kaneki’s waist. Since Hide didn't tense or draw back Kaneki thought to act on it, parting his lips and allowing his tongue to trace the seam of Hide’s lips and asking for permission. Sometime during this Kaneki slid his arms up and around his neck, holding Hide close.

    Hide slowly pulled back. “K-Kaneki,” he murmured, a question in his eyes.

    Shit. Now what was he supposed to say? He’d just somewhat pounced on his best friend and nearly shoved his tongue down Hide’s throat.

    “I - Uh - So, you see - I mean -” Kaneki gave a nervous smile, trying to form words to craft just a simple sentence. He couldn't very well tell the man he'd had feelings for him since they were young. Hide might think he wasn't in his right mind when he'd kissed him, especially where they were currently at. But this wasn't what was on Kaneki’s mind. Hide was a source of familiarity, strength, and - while he wouldn’t admit it just yet - love.

    “I’ll say it a third time: Boy toy.” Arima’s voice cut through Kaneki’s stop and start sentences; his being saved by the bell. They jumped apart quick, Hide whirling around to face the door.

    Kaneki didn't bother to try and correct him this time.

    “Find the girl Touka was looking for?” Hide asked smoothly.

    “No,” Arima cocked his head. “She wasn’t there. It looks like she packed and left in a hurry, left a note for Touka in case she was okay, told her she was heading east to the next town and that if Touka could find her, she’ll be there a few days before moving on, left the date so she knew when it was written. She was forced to evacuate. And Rize?” He looked around the kitchen, unable to see around Hide and Kaneki’s legs.

    “Gone. But I don't think she up and left. I think someone dragged her away,” Kaneki motioned with his head and stepping aside before he started for the front door.

    “That begs the question as to who took her.” Arima rubbed at his face.

    “You said she was injected with what you were, right?” Hide kept staring at him.

    “Right.”

   “This, yes.” Arima took out a vial of the virus from his pocket, holding it up. Hide made a face at it.

    “Arima and I are heading east to wherever Yoriko is. To see if there are more survivors, too; we might as well while we're there.” Touka fixed her coat as they met with her and Hinami in front.

    “Er, I was going to say I knew a doctor that might be able to help. I've known him a few years, him and his partner. But he's in the opposite direction of where you guys need to go.” Hide explained hesitantly.

    “Then you can go that way. But I'm going to find Yoriko before she leaves.” Touka’s tone was hard, as was the look in her eyes.

    “I’ll go with them, too.” Hinami offered. “I can help them find any survivors on their end while they search for the doctor. The more people not infected the better. The easier it'll be to keep ourselves alive.”

    “But -” Touka began.

    “I’ll be fine. Hide is pretty handy, and Kaneki is pretty good for someone who prefers to wield a frying pan - not that I'm judging you, since I'm carrying shears - and like I said, if we find survivors, it'll be worth it,” Hinami said.

    “I would've preferred we stayed as a group, or went three and three, but if there's a doctor that way that might be able to help, the sooner the better to head that way if he isn't zombified.” Arima holstered his weapon while he spoke. Kaneki guessed he didn't feel the were in any danger.

    “What he said,” Hide volunteered. “He’s a bit of a whack job, but he and his partner think outside the box frequently. Kaneki has to go since he's immune. I don't know about you guys, but I'm not exactly about to go up to a Blue and wait to be bitten to find out if I am.”

    Touka glared daggers as she was trumped three to one. She grit her teeth, “Fine. We'll need to set up a rendezvous point, or give us the location of the doctor.”

    “Does it look like I'm carrying anything to write with?” Hide rolled his eyes. He turned and then disappeared back into Rize’s house.

    Touka got into Kaneki’s face, who assumed that she was wishing for something dreadful to happen to him. “You’d better make sure Hinami stays safe or so help me I'll cut off each limb so many times you won’t have enough strength to regen -”

    “Oh, knock it off,” Hinami pulled Touka away by her arm. “Kaneki is not to be held responsible if something happens to me, you understand that? I'm in charge of what I do, even if I'm too slow to react to a zombie or whatever.”

    They had a silent stare down. Hinami won when Touka looked away to moodily glare at Rize’s house, arms crossed over her chest.

    “Here. This is the address of the doctor and I included a couple buildings we would be at if that fails or we needed to move. One has a basement,” Hide handed Arima a piece of paper since he was closest to him when he walked out of the house.

    Arima nodded his thanks and put the slip of paper in his pocket and then handing over two vials of the virus. Hide pocketed those. After a heartfelt goodbye between Hinami and Touka, followed by handshakes shared between the men and Touka giving them grudging waves; she and Arima headed off to the east.

    “Does this mean we can steal a car without getting arrested now?” Hide asked after a few minutes.

    Hinami looked at him as if he grew two heads in the span of three seconds.

    “You do realize he wouldn't have arrested us, right?” Kaneki arched an eyebrow, fighting to stay nonchalant.

    “He might. Handcuffs do hold a certain appeal, just not when we're out in the open in an apocalypse.” Hide winked. He then headed down the street, leaving his two companions to trot to catch up.

    “I suppose if no one is around and they left their cars it wouldn't entirely be a bad thing,” Hinami looked around the street thoughtfully.

    “You better hope they left keys behind because I don’t know how to hotwire a car.” Kaneki huffed.

    “They show it on TV all the time,” Hide said.

     “Just because they show it on TV, doesn't mean it works. And if it does work, it still doesn't guarantee anything if we can't connect the right wires,” Kaneki interjected.

    “Can we go with you're both right and find a car?” Hinami snorted unladylike.

    “What about that one?” Kaneki pointed to what he was certain was a Honda in powder blue.

    “Looks like a Civic. For this, I could've went back around to grab my mother’s car.” Hide jogged up to the fifth house down on the left in front of a brick building. Hinami went inside the house with Hide as Kaneki stood guard. When he spotted a Blue somewhere down the road, he crouched behind the car to avoid being seen. There was no wind, so smell might be out. Kaneki couldn't tell the hue of the Blue and decided to stay hidden. If it didn't get the jump on them, they had a chance to get away without being surprised.

    Of course being surprised was exactly what happened to Kaneki, thanks to Hide, who came up behind him and tapped him on the head.

    Naturally Kaneki whirled around swinging his frying pan. Hide ducked beneath his arm.

    “Since when did you become a swing-first-ask-questions-later person?” Hide huffed.

    “Since this happened,” Kaneki gestured towards the Blue impatiently. Hide glanced up to it then back down to Kaneki, that same look settling on him again from before. Now that Kaneki was a little calmer, not trying to be nonchalant again, it was easy to feel the tightening and cramping on his stomach.

    Hide was smiling then, but his eyes were turning mournful. “It does put a damper on one’s spirit, doesn't it? I don't think you should let it, though. If you let it get to you too much you might not be able to come back from it. I don't want that to happen to you, Kaneki. Never.”

    “I found a map!” Hinami bounced out of the house holding said item. “I mean, I assume that Hide knows where he’s going. Just to be on the safe side.”

    “How rude. I'm not going to get us lost.” Hide frowned.

    “You can argue over it in the car. The Blue is getting closer, you two.” Kaneki sighed. Hide paused in his jingling of the car keys to unlock the car. Hide got in the driver’s side, Hinami in the passenger side, and Kaneki in the back behind Hide.

    They were mildly surprised with him when, as they approached the Blue slowly, Kaneki slammed the car door outwards against it before Hide laughed.

    “How many points do I get for that?” Kaneki mused.

    “Thirty! Fifty if it doesn't get back up,” Hide cackled.

    Turning around, Kaneki watched it. “It’s getting back up - No, wait, it’s swaying, swaying . . .  and faceplant.”

    “We should go forty points since it got up before collapsing again.” Hinami suggested.

    “Wait, do I get forty points in total or seventy?”

    “I think we should go with forty based on the end result. What about you Hinami?” Hide cast a brief glance her way.

    “Otherwise it wouldn't be fair. I agree. Hey! We should set up a chart to see who gets the most points.” Hinami squealed. She whipped out a notebook from her stolen bag as Kaneki handed a bag of chips to his two companions after they settled on what kind they wanted.

    “Are we counting this as of now, or are we tallying up previous ones, too?” Kaneki mumbled around a chip.

    “Mmh, we’ll add up previous ones after the chart is set up, yeah? Oh! We should get a prize at the end of each week,” Hinami scribbled on her notepad, making sure the pen worked.

    “Like what? We could go around stealing jewelry and electronics,” Hide hummed.

    “We could always hand over the best food in whatever we have at the end of the week,” Kaneki offered.

    “Yes! Best food at the end of the week.” Hinami agreed.

    Kaneki realized that maybe setting up a point chart was sort of pathetic, but he also realized it couldn't be all that bad if he did it with some of the people he cared for, or was starting to care for.

    “What about five points for a body shot? But your limit is five, making it a total of twenty-five? This way you can’t just whale on a Blue and get away with it,” Kaneki said.

    “That would work, yes. Let's see . . . Okay, you get ten if you de-limb Blues somehow, tearing off a hanging arm for example, whether it’s on purpose or not,” Hide looked to his companions.

    Hinami was writing everything down. “Then there's the thirty points for hitting one with some sort of object large enough to knock them over. Forty if they get up but fall back down, fifty if they stay down.”

    “What about a hundred and something for a headshot?” Kaneki tried tallying up all the points in his head.

    “Hundred and fifty-five for headshots? I think that's all of it tallied up, right?” Hide’s face was scrunched up.

    “One-hundred-and-sixty. You missed the five singular for body shots. Unless we aren't counting that.” Hinami was scribbling numbers down, having added it all up.

    “Nah, we’ll count it. Adding up everything it is.” Hide gave a thumbs-up.

    “Why is a headshot always more?” Kaneki asked.

    “Maybe because the quicker you down one the quicker you can get away? If you used bullets and wasted them on body shots, well, that's wasting them,” Hide said.

    “Makes sense. Wait, is that all?” Kaneki leaned forward in his seat.

    Hinami had drawn up a board below that: 

  
  


Hide  |  Kaneki  |  Hinami

  
  


    “Nope! Now you have to start counting Blues and the injuries you did to them.” Hinami chirped.

    Kaneki did a mental tally, trying to figure it all out: one Blue from the hospital, two on the way to the warehouse, and one with Hide. Plus three headshots.

    “Hey, I had five body shots and three headshots. How much is that?” Kaneki asked. He waited as Hinami wrote it out quickly so as to get it right.

    “Twenty-five times five is one-hundred-and-twenty-five. One-sixty times three is four-eighty. In total . . . Six-hundred-and-five.” Hinami’s mouth dropped open. “This point system is already rigged.”

    “All of us chipped in!” Kaneki protested.

    “I got, uh, like, six body shots, exceeding the limit of five. So, I got a total of one-hundred-and-fifty.” Hide pitched in.

    Hinami was pouting as she wrote his up and then tallied her own. Kaneki leaned forward to see what she had written. “You only got seventy?”

    “Oh, shut up. I go for clean strikes; I don't have headphones or frying pans to bludgeon Blues.” Hinami whined.

    “In anyone’s defense, whatever they picked up first became their weapon of choice.” Hide said.

    Kaneki concurred and gave a snort/grunt to convey it.

    During the ride there, about an hour and a half, they engaged in small talk or the car was filled with comfortable silences. During those times no one had anything to say, just enjoying the company of others. At some point Kaneki noticed that the tips of his hair were streaked white, Kaneki fingering them curiously; his hair was increasingly becoming whiter and whiter the more that time passed. He prayed he wouldn’t eventually lose his hair or it turned sparse and he would be forced to comb hairs all over his head - he would probably look stupid if he tried to do something like that with each hair separating and showing his scalp, making it obvious of what he had tried to do. Hide had said he liked the white hair, but did Kaneki? He wasn't entirely sure and debated on dying it for at least a half hour.

_ Aw, come on, you can't dye it when you know he likes it. He said it looked hot, didn't he? _ One of the voices in his head whispered, more feminine than he would've liked. A pitch off from Rize.

_ But don't we have to like it, too? _ Another voice coiled around his brain.

    Kaneki didn't realize he was frowning at his reflection in the window as the voices bounced back and forth, arguing over whether he should keep it, or try to dye it. His reflection frowned back at him, white streaked hair subtly blowing with the breeze that drifted in from the front. He definitely looked different, even a little younger with the circles under his eyes a little less pronounced.

_ Should we _ at least  _ try to please Hide some more? _ Voice number one ground out. 

_ Oh, shut it, both of you. I'm going to keep it, _ Kaneki grumbled to both voices irritably.

    The voices sighed in resignation and Kaneki was absently picking at his fingernails before biting at them nervously when his mind started to replay everything in his head.

_ I can’t believe I kissed Hide, _ Kaneki worried at his lower lip.

_ Neither can we, _ voice number one and two chorused before the former continued,  _ But boy did it feel nice! _

_ He did kiss you back, too, _ voice two mused.

_ But what if he only did it so he didn't hurt my feelings? _

_     Honey, no one kisses back like that unless they're interested, _ voice one said.

_ What would you know about that?  _ Voice two grumbled.

    “Sorry, what?” Kaneki asked distractedly - interrupting his mental tirade - when Hinami prodded him on the shoulder.

    “I said, you shouldn't be biting at your nails like that. They look healthy, so you should keep them that way,” she repeated kindly.

    Kaneki put his hands in his lap, trying not to fidget. “It’s a habit.”

    Hinami’s eyes lit up before she rooted through her bag. She then produced a thick rectangular contained with black liquid. “You should paint your nails to help with that. It’s what my mom made me do to break me from that habit. If I wanted them to look nicer longer then I couldn't bite them.”

    “Why are you carrying around nail polish?” Hide glanced over.

    “I like nail polish,” Hinami said defensively. “I picked some up on the way to the hospital. Oh! Kaneki, can I paint your nails? Pleaaase? Touka never lets me do hers because she doesn’t like hers done.”

    Kaneki looked to Hide for help only to have him shrug. Looking back to Hinami he caved with the puppy look she was directing at him. Wordlessly, he relented and gave her his left hand as she squealed happily, launching herself into the back seat.

     Settling his hand on her thigh as directed he watched as she shook the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and set the bottle between her knees to hold it in place. In no time she was working on Kaneki’s nails, each swipe over the nail cool against the surface.

    “It isn't the same painting your nails alone. I used to paint Touka’s nails all the time until she grew she hate polish.” Hinami was animatedly talking now.

    “Really? She let you do it?” Kaneki asked, a hint of surprise in his tone. Touka didn't seem to be one for getting her nails or such ‘dressed up,’ even if the situation could call for it.

    “Her favourite one to wear was a purply pink colour. It didn't too much one or the other and that made it the perfect balance between the two.”

    Suddenly an image of Kaneki sporting the same hue flashed before his eyes; he had to keep a snicker in check.

    “But if I brought it up to her she would probably punch me in the gut.” Kaneki said.

    Hinami giggled as she finished up one hand to start the other. “She definitely would. So, how long have the two of you been friends?”

    “Since we were children, actually. ‘Bout ten or so. He was new to the school when I found him by the lake alone. No one had been paying much attention to him, so I went over and we struck up a conversation. Been friends since then.” Hide said, a hint of pride in his voice.

    “Yes, Hide likes to think he saved me from certain death.” Kaneki replied dryly.

    “I did! If it wasn't for me you'd be more bone than skin with the way you picked at food. Turns out his mother barely paid attention to what he ate and sent him on with lunches his despised and my mother made food he liked, so until we were thirteen we would trade lunches. I made the “mistake” of telling my mother I was swapping lunches with a friend, so she insisted on giving Kaneki’s mother recipes so he would eat,” Hide responded.

    “My mother burned the first recipe given. And the second. And the third.” Kaneki snorted.

    Hinami was smiling as she watched them, screwing the lid back into place and finishing his nails. “Seems to me like he saved you.”

    “See? She agrees with me. I knew there was a reason I liked you!” Hide said cheerily. 

    Kaneki groaned. What had he done letting these two meet up if they were going to team up on him in the future? He then started to blow on his nails gently, per Hinami’s suggestion.

    “I hate you both.” Kaneki muttered in between soft blows. Hinami climbed back into the front seat and, while Kaneki didn't see her, she had slipped the black nail polish into her companion’s bag.

    “You know you love us.” Hide smirked. 

_  Oh, you have no idea just how much in your case Hide, _ Kaneki thought. Instead he said, “You got me there.”

    Ten minutes later and Hide pulled into a nearly empty lot with a four story building overlooking it. It was wide from the front, almost hospital looking with semi-wide windows, curved paved road in front of a set of glass double doors. Hide didn't bother with the parking lot, he just parked in front of the doors. Kaneki stepped from the car, bags on his back, frying pan in one hand with a blade in the other. If he lost the blade, he still had the two small screwdrivers in his front pockets. Kaneki looked to the four pillars holding up an awning over their heads before peering to the slate grey building.

    “This friend of yours,” Kaneki began, “What kind of work does he actually do?”

    “Little of this, little of that.” Hide offered vaguely.

    “That's reassuring. So long as he doesn't try to dissect us, I'm good.” Hinami gave them a thumbs up before walking in front of them, forcing the other two to go with her. 

    It was eerily quiet in the building as they entered, a gentle bell chiming to alert anyone of their appearance. They all tensed, waiting for Blues to show up. When none did, they continued on to the back of the building towards the stairs.

    “Now we go up one flight - he’s on the second floor.” Hide said softly. He opened the door, looking up the stairs, checking for Blues in the hall. With the coast clear they continued on two flights of stairs to the second floor.

    “On your left!” A voice said faintly, from somewhere in the building. Kaneki pushed open the door and the voices got louder. Two more voices had joined the first.

    “I can fucking see that! I'm not blind, jackass.” Said the second voice.

   “Don’t call him a jackass, you jackass! He was trying to be helpfu - Shit, there’s more coming. Hurry up.” Said the third voice.

    “Don’t tell me to hurry. I can see that there's more.” Replied the second voice. Under all the shouting, Kaneki could hear growls, snarls, and scraping with the occasional thump, presumably a Blue hitting the ground.

    Peeking around the corner, all the way at the end of the hall, were three people surrounded by a horde of Blues. One was taller than the other two with hazelnut coloured hair, one with deep blue - almost black, really - and the last one’s hair was black. He was considerably weirdly dressed in harem pants, sandals, and a tank top. Kaneki didn't see many people lounging around in harem pants and they weren't exactly his style.

    “Time to help.” Kaneki snorted, lifting his frying pan.

    “The other two look like they would sooner murder us than ask for help.” Hinami cocked her head a bit.

    “True, but still.” Kaneki said.

    “Go ahead Kaneki.” Hide said, getting ready with his own weapon. Hinami as well.

    Kaneki swung his frying pan, smashing it into the wall as he whistled loudly. The horde looked in their direction and half of them ran towards them. The three companions rushed forward to meet them, Kaneki slinging his knife into the throat of one before leaping atop another and swinging his frying pan three times. Kaneki didn't stop there and neither did Hide and Hinami, who stabbed them in the forehead with a screwdriver and decapitated them in the order named respectively.

    There had to have been at least fifteen Blues, each of them taking down five with some of them standing around because they couldn't smell them due to the car fresheners. (Do you think we smelled like freshly cooked meat? Kaneki kept wondering what exactly they smelled like, aside from food.)

    Kaneki slung his frying pan across his shoulder, blade in his other hand while he threw a cautious look to the other trio where they'd also decimated whatever Blues had been left. The tall one, his hair was flared out at the ends and Kaneki could just make out the glint of glasses; he was dressed in a light blue sweatshirt, pants, and sneakers. The man next to him with the blue hair was dressed in a jacket, jeans, and knee high boots - Kaneki realized as they got closer that he looked familiar - and - Was that a bulge in his jacket?

    “Uta!” Hide greeted warmly. The raven-haired man gave a nod of acknowledgment. He had the left and underside of his hair shaved with the rest, save for his bangs, thrown up in something akin to a bun (too messy to tell). Was it him, or were the whites of his eyes not the right colour? They were black instead of white and his eyes were red.

    “Hide, it’s been a couple weeks since you last dropped by.” Uta said. Kaneki recognized the voice as being the first one he heard. It was lower with an amused sort of lilt to it.

    “I was a little busy. And then this happened. Where’s your partner?”

    “Home last I heard from him an hour ago. Phones are still up and running with no one to keep tabs. Why?”

    “Sir, your jacket is wiggling,” Kaneki addressed the other dark haired boy, whose jacket was in fact moving.

    The guy just glared at Kaneki. “Call me ‘sir’ again and I'll rip off your finger and shove it -”

    “Shut the hell up, Ayato, no one wants to hear you speak.” Tall Man said, being voice number three with Ayato being the second.

    “Fuck you.” He retorted.

    “Not in this lifetime and not in the next. I'd rather be castrated. Besides, you aren't my type - in attitude or form. I prefer women.”

    Uta slapped Tall Man on the back. “C’mon, surely it would be fun to bend over and enjoy yourself for once, yes?” 

    “Shove off, old man.” He growled.

    A black ball fell from Ayato’s jacket. It landed on the ground and Kaneki instinctively tensed. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be - 

    “Why do you have a rabbit in your jacket?” Hinami bent to pet it. Ayato scooped it up with a grunt, flickering a bat at Hinami.

   “None of your business,” he grunted.

    “Cheerful,” Tall Man said.

    “This is Nishiki and Ayato.” Uta introduced.

    “I’m Kaneki, this is Hinami and obviously one of you knows Hide.”

    “Anyway, we figured the both of you could help us. You see, Uta, Kaneki here was bitten, but he hasn't changed and he isn't showing symptoms.” Hide said.

    “Long story short, I had my eye ripped out, wound up in the hospital, and had something injected into me. The hospital is where this started. And I was there where it started.”

    Uta looked vaguely amused now. “So, you're supposed to have changed and never did. Wonderful! This will indeed be interesting. Let me call in some more help. Boys, why don't you barricade the doors? I'm sure we'll be here a while, and it’d be best if we remained safe.”

    Uta instantly turned and walked back down the hall, each of them following obediently.

    “Do you two know Uta personally?” Hide asked Ayato and Nishiki. Kaneki was still trying to figure out why Ayato looked familiar.

    “I volunteer here sometimes when I don't have shit to do.” Nishiki said.

    “Legally he's my adoptive father.” Ayato said, petting the rabbit now, scratching between its ears.

    “Adoptive?” Kaneki asked.

    “Yes, as in my parents didn't want me and left me in the damn street.” He said curtly.

    “Is it too late to leave?” Kaneki leaned over to whisper in Hide’s ear.

    “We can still hear you, stupid.” Nishiki glowered at him from over his shoulder.

    Kaneki sighed. At least he tried, right?

    The room they were led into was littered with microscopes, tubes, syringes, and a bunch of other medical-like things. Uta rummaged around in a drawer, pulling out something he was certain was an alcohol swab, before grabbing packaged syringes and tubes. “I’ll need some of your blood, if you don't mind, Kaneki.” Uta said.

    “Sure, I guess.” Kaneki sat on a nearby stool.

    Kaneki winced from the needle prick, watching as his blood filled up a tube.

    “The fuck is wrong with his blood?” Ayato asked. His face was scrunched up in disgust.

    “You said you were injected with something, yes? It would be better if I had a sample of this. I'll just need to make do.” Uta was squinting at the vial while another filled up.

    “Actually -” Hide reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial of the virus and held it up. “- we managed to snag this. Well, Kaneki did.”

    “Excellent!” There was an excited glimmer in Uta’s eyes. “Set it right over there.” Uta waved in the direction of a table while the third tube filled with his blood.

    Hide did as told, Uta taking all the vials over as well before carefully flushing water into the line at Kaneki’s elbow - it felt like ice going through his veins - then taking a cotton ball and placing it over the wound, squeezing it there with a slight bit of pressure. After a few minutes he took a band-aid - were those cats and rainbows? - to place it over the small puncture wound.

    “I’ll call him, see how long it'll take him to get over. He'll be just as excited to work on such a thing. We don't have any rooms here if you don't mind being uncomfortable waiting around.” Uta said.

   “Actually, there's a place we can stay and lounge around in. We have comrades and we're using the building to rendezvous with them. The nice hotel? Few people go there because it’s set back into the woods a bit. I doubt they'll be here tonight as they had a long journey, but they could've done what we did.” Hide said. 

    “And what did you do?” Nishiki asked. 

    “Stole a car.” Hide grinned. Kaneki had a feeling it was on some sort of list.

    “You - Fucking hell, why didn't I think of that? I walked a damn league here with this asshole.” Ayato jerked a thumb at Nishiki. Nishiki gave him the finger. Er, fingers.

    “It’s not like the person was going to miss it. We checked the house and all.” Hide shrugged.

    Ten minutes later and everyone started talking - actually Hinami was pestering the three other men, asking Uta if she could paint his nails purple and removing the chipped polish and he said yes - before Hide came over and gently grasped his elbow.

    “I think we need to talk,” Hide murmured.

    “I don't think so,” Kaneki said quickly, hoping to throw him off. “We’re fine.” 

    “We  _ need _ to talk.” Hide said firmly, his tone indicating he was not taking ‘no’ for an answer.

    “By the way, he'll be here in about an hour or so.” Uta addressed them before waving his hand while Hinami worked at removing his polish.

    Kaneki was being hauled off to the opposite end of the room they were in. Kaneki said, “This really isn't a good idea.”

    “Maybe not, but I need to know,” Hide paused, inhaling and exhaling slowly, steeling his nerves. “Why?”

    “Why what?” Kaneki asked lamely. He was pointedly ignoring his best friend.

    Hide gave him a firm, stern look. “Why did you kiss me, Kaneki?”

    “I thought it was obvious.”

    “If it’s because we may be some of the last survivors around so far, and you might be lonely, or had a moment of weakness, I mean, I could understand the weakness or the loneliness. But if it’s because you don't have much of an option, and you do, I'm sure, but that is not fair for you to do. To-to what? Mess around with someone else's feelings like that?” Hide swallowed roughly, pausing in his whispering. “I don't think I could handle it if you were doing that to me. Please, tell me I'm wrong, that that isn’t what it is.”

    It was a pleading, begging look that matched Hide’s tone. Kaneki couldn't even get mad that Hide was assuming he was only showing interest because of where they were now. He had never shown interest before, so Hide wasn't wrong to question him. But what more else could be said to fix it? Saying that Kaneki didn't think Hide would ever be interested like that - after all, he was typically swarmed by most girls - didn't exactly cut it well enough combined with Kaneki could never muster the courage to admit a crush to a growing love. Kaneki was scared of truly letting him in that way, especially now. How would it go if, by chance, Hide got bit and turned? If they were together, then Kaneki would become even more invested. He honestly thought that Hide wouldn't be interested, but . . . seeing that look on his face, hearing those words . . .

    Kaneki knew he had fucked up when Hide’s face fell and he looked crushed. He turned around when Kaneki didn't answer, starting to go back towards their other comrades. Kaneki lurched forward to throw his arms around Hide’s chest from behind.

    “That isn't what I'm doing. I've liked you for a long time,” Kaneki murmured against against the dip in his back. “Although ‘like’ is too small of a word, because what I feel is so much stronger. I didn't say anything before I thought you wouldn't have those sorts of feelings for me. It’s even scarier because what if you get bit, but you aren't like me? We don't know if you are or not, and it’s like stepping on stones,” 

    Hide had tensed, standing there as stiff as a board. The more he listened, the more he relaxed. But he didn't address Kaneki again, instead he said, “Uta?”

    “Eh?” 

    “I was wondering if maybe you could take blood from all of us, to see if you could find something that points to who is immune and who isn't. It may be helpful. I mean, we'll still be careful, so it’s just to see. Maybe our added blood will be a help in the end.” 

    From under Hide’s arm it was easy to see that Uta was thinking on it. He then nodded. “Hinami, come. I'll get a new set of gloves. Sit.”

    “Hey, wait, I didn't agree to this.” Ayato scoffed.

    “Too bad. You either sit there, or you'll be the first one as I have everyone hold you down.” Uta smirked.

    Ayato just grumbled before agreeing to help so long as Uta didn't take too long drawing blood. Hinami went on to ask Uta about his eyes and they all learned that he wore contacts for the red eyes and had dye injected into the whites of his eyes. He said he enjoyed the intimidation effect it brought on.

    “I know that it'll make it worse if something happens, but I think it will be better to enjoy what time we have left with who we're surrounded by.” Hide looked over his shoulder with a smile. “I wouldn't want to let this chance escape, Kaneki. Neither one of us showed how we really felt and I think it’s time we stopped that. If it happens, I'd rather die knowing I had one of the best opportunities than you being a giant What If.”

    Kaneki moved back as Hide turned around to face him again. This time Kaneki could identify the look in his eyes as something gentle and fond. Maybe he had been too scared to really acknowledge what it meant, in case he was misinterpreting anything.

    “What do you say? Are you willing to give it a shot?” Hide murmured.

    He was done thinking about it. About what he should do, when he should do it. Was it so much to ask to just enjoy little pieces of heaven when there wasn't much to look forward to? If something happened, then they could cross that bridge when it came to it. Until then, Kaneki was going to protect what he loved. He could take the pain if it meant being able to keep Hide and make sure he was safe.

    “You know, I think that we should. I don't want to spend the rest of my life wondering what it would be like. Even if I have to act as a barrier between you and Blues, I don't plan on letting you get away if I can help it. So long as you’ll have me.” Kaneki smiled up at his best friend. Maybe it was going too fast, but maybe it wasn't if they truly did have a limited amount of time. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A round of applause to my beta, tacticalghoul (on Tumblr). Also, once I update another fic I have not gotten the chance to, I will be changing my name or something, so keep the name of this fic in mind just in case (it will match my Tumblr, being either AMuseWithin or AMuseWithinMe). On my Tumblr, you will get previews and updates on either what I will update next, or any reasons for delays.  
> Feed me some love new/old readers, it's been a little bit.


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